


Silence of the Sands

by Ramzes



Series: Glass of Ice [2]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU - Canon Divergence, Angst, Multi, Not a Happy Story, and yes lyanna lives, dealing with the aftermath, even i feel bad for her, not for lyanna fans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-27
Updated: 2019-07-19
Packaged: 2019-08-08 15:12:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 24,672
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16431836
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ramzes/pseuds/Ramzes
Summary: Under different circumstances, their marriage might have been different. As it is - after the end of the rebellion, as a way to bring peace between the Starks, the Iron Throne, and the future Queen Elia's kin, it's the last thing Lyanna Stark wants or needs.





	1. Chapter 1

At the time the bedding came, Lyanna desperately wished for more of the calming draught but she doubted anyone would be this thoughtful to provide her with any.  This far, no one had, she could tell by the way her anxiety returned, manifesting itself in desperate fear and even shaking hands. She tried to calm them down and for the first time since the beginning of her labour she realized that she was helpless before the acts and will of her body – she could impose none of her own and that stunned her just like it had done then.

All around her, merriment abounded. As the evening advanced and wine poured like water, people had forgotten the reason for the wedding and the identity of the bride. Forced gaiety had become real. A mockery of wedding was just as good a reason for a feast as any other. Lyanna had the feeling that she was the only one who did not feel elated, one way or another. Even her bridegroom was smiling, talking animatedly to one of his companions – a man as swarthy as him who had slid into the seat Princess Elia had recently vacated.

Princess Elia! The future queen! Lyanna could not believe that this was the end. Her father and Brandon were dead, thousands of others were as well, the realm had gone through a war and destruction and those who had wanted to cast the Mad King aside had succeeded – and for what? For Elia Martell’s son! Who might not even be Robert’s child – no more than this one was Rhaegar’s!

Oberyn Martell’s companion seemed to have read her thoughts, for he leaned closer to the Prince and asked in a low voice, “Is Elia not coming back? It’s been some time.”

Oberyn shrugged. “I doubt it. Many women in her state have it hard during the day but for her, evenings are more exhausting.”

Memories of Lyanna’s own state a few months ago rushed into her head, so vivid that she could feel anew every trouble caused by it – and she was stronger than the painfully slender, frail Dornish princess. But no, she forbade herself to feel any sympathy for the woman who had betrayed Rhaegar and did not even mourn him. She ordered herself not to listen to the conversation and instead looked around the table for Ned. He was talking to Robert but even after he noticed her attempts to attract his attention, he steadfastly refused to give it to her. Did he feel guilty? At the moment, Lyanna was ready to forgive him everything if he would only give her a smile of reassurance because the moment was coming… coming…

Wild fear and wilder yet hope filled her as the door cut them from the noise and torches of the cheering crowd. She had heard that women liked having Oberyn Martell in their beds but she did not think he would take care to make her like it. In fact, he’d probably unleash his resentment upon her – and take delight in it. Still, she could not give up on the hope that he’d find her too repellent to touch. She had no illusions what her new husband thought of her – punishing her would likely be this part of the marriage that he enjoyed most…

The pain of the bedding was excruciating, much worse than when Rhaegar had taken her maidenhead and yet Lyanna had the strange feeling that he was not trying to do anything cruel. Was it her revulsion at the thought of having a man other than Rhaegar touch her that made her very womb tighten and the channel go tender? She did not know but as she lay with her eyes opened and forbade the tears from coming, the whiteness of the bridal chamber seemed to mock her with the pretention of a true wedding, true marriage, the pain of a first coupling… She wanted to go to her babe and fall asleep holding him to her, but of course, he was under the care of a nursemaid – chosen by Elia Martell. And she couldn’t leave her bridal chamber without causing further rumours and frictions between the men from the North, Dorne and… all other regions. _What did I push myself into a year ago_ , she thought desperately and immediately banished this thought from her mind because it felt like a betrayal. But the treacherous hints kept returning now and then and when her new husband fell asleep and the moon dipped behind the windows that were made of glass – she had never seen such before she had first come south – she finally could no longer fight it: what anguished her most was the fact of what could have been. Oberyn Martell was a handsome men and this entire environment was like she had always imagined her bridal chamber would look like: a magnificently appointed room, a handsome man and behind the door, many people celebrating. At her true wedding, she had only looked at Rhaegar and while the two servant maids had done their best to make their chamber look enticing, they had been peasant girls. They had not known how to arrange thing in any refined manner…

She did not want the man or the marriage but she still barely managed to stop herself from weeping for what could have been. And this was a betrayal worse than everything Elia Martell had done.

* * *

“When are we leaving?” she asked a few days later as he came to collect her and lead her to the great hall for the evening feast – the only time they got to talk, it seemed.

Oberyn didn’t even look at her. “Not yet.”

“Not yet?” Lyanna repeated and tried to hide the horror his words filled her with. “We aren’t going to stay here forever, are we?”

This idea could not be borne. Stay here, where Ned kept distancing himself from her and the men she had grown up around followed his lead? Where women’s voices chattered merrily before she entered a room, only to stop as if cut with a knife when she entered? Where people would serve her with difference but never look at her? Where Princess Elia and Robert’s grandmother kept being sickeningly polite by inviting her over in her hours of leisure with their ladies and Lyanna had to watch as the women fretted over Elia’s state and discussed the details of her wedding – to Lyanna’s former betrothed? At least Robert kept away from her but to her surprise, even this was not quite to her liking. She had never doubted his love for her – before. Now, he couldn’t be bothered to even be cruel to her. He did not mind having her at his table. He even said a few words to her from time to time, although he was mostly preoccupied with his future lady wife and despite not begrudging the Dornish princess this marriage – she would never want the man who had killed Rhaegar, - Lyanna bitterly wondered why with her, he couldn’t have been the way he was with Elia. Perhaps then… At this, she would startle out of her daydreaming and an overwhelming feeling of guilt would crush her.

The best way to alleviate it was to hold her babe in her arms but sometimes, even this did not help. Rhaegar had wanted a dragon and not a wolf, yet a wolf cub they had gotten. Such a Stark that she looked for Brandon in him, and his father. But as her love for him grew, she was eager to get away from this poisonous well that was King’s Landing. Oberyn had no interest in either of them, so he would leave her to build a life of her own, where only she and Jon would exist. But this could not happen here.

“We’re going to stay for my sister’s wedding, of course,” Oberyn replied, still not looking at her, and Lyanna felt like a stupid little girl. Of course he’d want to see the wedding and the coronation – House Martell’s hour of ultimate triumph. This had been the entire motivation behind their actions ever since Aerys had first approached them in regards to Elia’s marriage. She had just thought that he’d be so eager to separate her from everything and everyone, have her in his power that he would not put up with any delays.

The ever so rare mentioning of Elia effectively put an end to the conversation and the silence persisted until they reached the great hall and the evening feast where people at the high table were trying to make small conversations out of decorum but since Lyanna did not know how to engage in women’s chatter and had no common interests with them, they quickly abandoned their attempts and she was left to her silence, the occasional word from Oberyn and two or three of the other men, and the realization that if things kept going on like this, she’d soon take to the needle, just so she had something to talk about with the others. It could not get any worse…

About a month later, when Elia’s third child was born as dark as her but with purple eyes and a patch of silver hair that stood up against her olive head, Lyanna found out that the pillars of her world could and did break anew.

 


	2. Chapter 2

The white castle came into view slowly, shimmering against twilight, like those songs about a maiden’s body shining white in the night. Lyanna had always scoffed at them but secretly, she had found them fascinating – sometimes. In the Tower of Joy, she had asked Arthur Dayne, the only Dornishman among them, to tell her more about this kingdom. He had not been too talkative but even so, he had never mentioned a word about the beauty of his own home, sparkling white against the river, the towers rising high above the walls, like the abode of a celestial being reigning over water.

Then, of course, a voice spoke and the magic was gone. “Is someone leaving?” Oberyn asked, a few steps away from her and staring as well. “Has someone been visiting?”

“Not exactly.” Lord Dayne’s voice was tense and Lyanna and Oberyn both looked at him. “It’s my personal boat. My lady grandmother is going… somewhere.”

Silence shivered in the air and Lyanna wondered what was wrong with a lady deciding to travel. And in Dorne? If a woman made this decision, she was most likely to do it without asking permission in Dorne, more than anywhere else, surely? But Lord Dayne spun around and headed for the bow where he stood, staring right ahead, as if he could make the ship before them and the tiny silhouettes running up and down with rigs and supplies reveal their secrets.

Dowager Lady Dayne met them behind the second gate. Her first look went to her grandson and so Lyanna had the chance to have a good look at her and shake in antipathy. With her fair skin and the chiseled bones, her violet eyes still bright and clear almost like Lady Ashara’s, Rhae Dayne, a princess of House Targaryen, looked like the spitting image of her granddaughter. She was just older.

“What’s going on?” Arel Dayne asked, indicating the gates with his chin. “Where are you going?”

“To Sunspear,” the old woman replied and looked at Oberyn. “I think you should come with me – both of you…”

Lyanna saw how her husband’s face lost its entire colour. “Mother?” he asked in a low voice.

Rhae shook her head.

“Then what…” His colour that had barely started returning was wiped off again. “Errol?” he asked as if he could not quite believe it.

She nodded. “The tip of the spear has finally started coming out. He is…” She paused.

“But he was much better!” Oberyn exclaimed. “When I left, he had already risen and…”

She shook her head. “He was living on a borrowed time. Remember what the maesters said? The tip was lodged very close to his lungs. He might have luck, they said… or he might not.” She paused and reached inside a pocket. Oberyn recoiled from the scroll she held out and she did not insist.

Finally, he reached out but did not open the scroll. Rhae Dayne was watching him very closely. “Your brother has summoned you. Your father needs you. If you leave with me, at this night’s tide, you may see Errol alive once more.”

The whole journey passed like a dream – a pale eerie dream in which the white sails gleamed like ghosts against the moon and their ship was the only breathing thing in this world of rippling velvet, dark at their feet and radiant in silver where the horizon lay. Jon was sleeping in his crib so soundly that a few times, Lyanna went over to make sure that he was breathing. Each time, she checked on the long thick nails that held the crib to the wall. They had been placed there at the last moment and… she did not think that anyone would have really want to harm her child on purpose but it was never a bad thing to be sure.

In the cabin next to her, she could hear the noise of the other children – Rhaenys’ questions, Aegon’s sleepy murmur. Like Jon, Mariah seemed to make no noise. But even these two could do little to break the quietness that was this ship in this night and…

“Can’t you move faster?” Oberyn’s voice would seethe with helpless anger but after the wind stopped carrying it, the silence would return. “Faster! We must go faster!”

Arel Dayne would say something and then silence would reign anew, and this night would never come to its end…

They arrived at Sunspear when the sun was setting over a city, the likes of which Lyanna has never seen. Such mixture of opulent wealth and desperate poverty! Houses that looked like great castles dwarfed small dwellings, more fit for children, and three towers soared to the sky as the sun bled lower than their level, as if taken down by their sharp spears. Lyanna looked at the banner their ship was flying and shivered, willing the sun to rise back.

The crowd gathered there looked no different than the one who gathered under the walls of Winterfell whenever her lord father returned from a prolonged journey. There was just one difference and Lyanna realized it the moment her lord husband did, when they were already in the boat that would lead them ashore: this crowd was silent. Silent and bristling. She could actually hear the whinnying of the horses brought for their party.

“Where are you taking him?” she cried out, frightened, when Lady Dayne motioned to Gala to follow her to a litter. The young woman hesitated, looking at Lyanna.

“Go with my lady,” Oberyn ordered, although he looked uncertain as to what was going on as well. “Be quiet,” he hissed when Lyanna opened her mouth to argue that she would not let anyone to take her child from her. It suddenly came to her mind that she was no longer in position to let anyone do anything; if her lord husband so wished, she would never see Jon again. She had never felt this helpless, even when Rhaegar had made it clear that she would not leave his tower until he let her go, even when she had been going through the motions of wedding and when she had realized that Rhaegar had fathered a child on another woman just a few months after he had fathered one on her. Never. She went silent and only felt a brief flash of relief when the other nursemaids followed Lady Dayne as well. Wherever she was taking Jon, she was taking Elia’s children as well – which meant that he would not be left in a hovel or some other places that flashed through Lyanna’s mind.

“Get in already,” Oberyn snapped but in a low voice.

Her experiences in King’s Landing had taught her to fear a crowd that glared silently. She immediately abandoned her desire to ride after all this time on a ship. She climbed in the litter – and the crowd erupted.

“Move!” Oberyn barked and this was the last thing she heard before she found herself trapped in a world of four velvet walls that did little to shield her from but the softest of insults and curses people threw her way. Words… and other things, if the way the velvet shook and swelled inside when hit by an object were something to go by. Lyanna pressed her hands to her ears but even so, the shouts about the whore who had been rewarded for being this and the man who had spat on Dorne’s honour to get a rich dowry and the mercy of the new King echoed in her head, swirled in, fought one another and they were more terrible than those same words heard in King’s Landing because these were the people she would have to live with now, her own new people, and…

Finally, gradually, the shouts abated into silence. The curtains stirred and she was free to climb down. She was between the walls of a castle and this was the reason the crowd could no longer assault her with their offenses. A few steps away, Oberyn jumped from his saddle and went past her – Lyanna thought he did not even see her, he was so focused. Blood streaked his face – from a stone? How did they punish smallfolks for such things in Dorne? Lyanna realized that she had no idea. She did not even know what was done in such cases in the North. The Starks were beloved. Thrown stones at? This was simply inconceivable.

She looked around helplessly. There were many men and not a single woman. No one made it to her to show her where she was supposed to go. Very well, then! She raised her chin and followed after Oberyn… and then really, really wished she had not, for the chamber he entered was filled with whispers befitting a funeral already and the man in the bed lay without moving, and he looked so much like Rhaegar that Lyanna gasped and pressed her hand to her mouth, shocked by the emotion that overwhelmed her. But the woman sitting at his bedside looked up and Lyanna gasped again, for how had Elia Martell made it here before them? Would she haunt Lyanna’s life forever? Only after a while, when Oberyn had already knelt next to the bed and taken the man’s hand in his own, did Lyanna realize that the woman was not Elia. Of course she was not. But she was still with child, this much was obvious, and Lyanna felt a surge of pity for having to go through this in this state…

“Come with me,” Rhae Dayne spoke in her ear and Lyanna followed gratefully. The sight of this Rhaegar and this woman with child, this Elia lookalike was something she wanted to take herself away from because, strangely, it made her think of how things might have been between the real Rhaegar and the real Elia if he had not fallen in love with her. Had he looked at Elia the way this man looked at this woman? Lyanna almost laughed in bitter wonder. How would she know? She did not even know if he had looked at _her_ like this. _Yes, yes, he must have!_ He had only gone back to Elia because Lyanna had rejected him, blamed him for something that he held no blame for…

“You can have some rest here,” the old woman said. “Soon, they’ll come with food and bath.”

Lyanna was immensely relieved to find out that Gala and Jon were already here. For a while, she had imagined that Oberyn might decide to keep her son away from her for a while, just to punish her. But now she realized that it had been presumptuous of her. He had not spoken to her since their arrival at Starfall, save for ordering her in the litter – which, she now knew, might have saved her some stones like the ones he had not escaped. He did his best to pretend that he was not a man wed. Lyanna knew she should be glad, yet it stung.

“Is he hungry?” she asked, shaking these thoughts away.

Gala shook her head. “I’ve just fed him. Oh, my lady, I was so scared. I thought they’d attack the litters, I did!”

“Well, they didn’t,” Lyanna said. “We’re safe. Let us refresh ourselves and finally go to bed. No one needs us.”

No one would ever need her but Jon. She wanted to go to sleep with him in her arms but she could not risk overlaying him, so after she ate, she left him in the crib that had been just brought to her and placed it next to her bed. Gala looked at her gratefully and immediately went to sleep on her pallet in the antechamber.

Part of Lyanna was afraid that Oberyn would come, angry and grieving, and rouse her to avenge himself upon her and yet as she went to sleep, she remembered not this fear but the emotion that had come upon her when she had seen the silver-haired dying man and for a moment of madness had thought it was Rhaegar. Triumph and elation. She pushed this memory away. She had loved Rhaegar and rejected him, and she had not felt any triumph. None at all…

What roused her was not Oberyn but the screams – wild screams in nothing resembling a human voice. Lyanna jumped from the bed and looked around, trying to remember where she was and what was going on… The marked candle had burned out but it did not matter. Lyanna could see that it was a day now.

“Gala?” she called. “What’s going on?”  

“He died,” a voice said, a voice that was not the nursemaid’s. Lyanna spun around, ready to attack like a wolf, and then blinked. “He died and she went mad with grief. She must be waking from the milk of the poppy that they forced into her.”

The words sounded neutral but there was nothing neutral in the look the speaker was giving her. Instead, there was open curiosity – not of the friendly sort. Open curiosity, and some disdain. The girl was no beauty, by any means, and there was something defiant about her that set Lyanna on the alert. Had she come from the street? The shouts and curses still echoed in her head but no, the stranger was dressed too richly for this, although she seemed unaccustomed to this kind of attire and glared at the silk folds that irritated her. She was just a few years younger than Lyanna.

“Who are you?” Lyanna asked guardedly, knowing that she had not found a friend. “What are you doing in my chambers? I dislike having people here when I sleep.”

The girl huffed. “You lords and ladies are just strange this way. What do you think I’m going to do to you in your sleep?”

“Why are you here?” Lyanna demanded, storing away the curious fact that the girl was clearly a stranger to castles at all.

The girl smiled, slowly and not quite kindly. “I wanted to see you,” she said. “Since you’re now my stepmother and all.”

Only the nearby chair stopped Lyanna from swooning right there. All of a sudden, the reality of her future dawned on her and she found herself longing for Robert who would have at least kept his bastards out of her sight.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wish a Merry Christmas to all my readers. May you always find your way and it be the road to happiness.

For a few hours, Lyanna did what she had, in those long days in Rhaegar’s tower, vowed that she would never do once she gained her freedom again:  she let herself be imprisoned. Fear prevented her from leaving the chamber she had been granted, although the strange girl’s arrival had revealed the fragility of her perception of it as a sanctuary. Everyone could break its sanctity now and still, Lyanna feared going out, following the sounds of weeping and the woman’s wails that only stopped for a while when she had screamed herself hoarse. The woman who entered with Lyanna’s meals and water for her ablations and Jon’s needs, would not look at her even covertly, as any servant would do with a new mistress.

Lyanna did not know what to do in the immediate aftermath of a death caused by her running away, so she spent the entire morning and a great part of the afternoon in this bedchamber. No one came to make her the usual visits of welcome but she had not expected it. She wondered if someone even knew where she had been put in. If Oberyn’s daughter was aware, then he was as well – but he did not care to come and tell her what he expected of her to do.

Finally, late in the afternoon, she conquered her fear and ordering Gala not to leave Jon out of her sight, headed for the hallway and staircase that she had come from. She did not know what she expected to see, she only knew that had she stayed in there any longer, the walls would have pressed around her. Oberyn passed her by in a spacious hall but did not even look at her; only when she saw another Oberyn going through a side door did she realize that without a closer look, she could not tell her own lord husband from the other man. The rumours she had heard about her goodfather rushed to her mind. How many sons Oberyn’s age had he fathered on different women? Had he had them raised under the same roof as his trueborn children? Where his lady wife had ruled? If so, Oberyn and Elia were quite the hypocrites, being so judgmental of her… but then, she suddenly found herself staring into the dead face that resembled Rhaegar’s so much, and the Elia lookalike, bloated with weeping and having no beauty left to her, snarled that if Lyanna didn’t leave right now, she’d kill her upon the spot.

“I’ll hold her for you,” the golden-haired beauty sitting next to her offered. “Oberyn will be grateful, I suppose. He’ll be free and then, he can just sit there and watch as they put us to trial.”

“You can’t hold anyone,” the unpleasant girl from this morning said, startling Lyanna with her appearance from the very shadows. “Even yourself up. Come with me.”

The fair-haired woman gave her a belligerent look. “You aren’t a keeper of mine, Obara.”

“Prince Doran begs to differ,” the girl said, nonplussed, and started tugging her. As scrawny as she was, she seemed to be quite strong because the woman found herself on her feet, swaying. Only now did Lyanna understand that she was drunk, horribly drunk, and she recoiled. Even a madman runs away from a drunken man, the saying went and for some reason, the exquisiteness of the pale face and blue eyes and this willowy frame made the drunken collapse against the girl’s shoulder and the reeking breath even more horrible.

“Now, that’s a good girl,” Obara said, walking under her burden with no difficulty at all. “I think you should leave now as well,” she added to Lyanna. “Don’t listen to her. My father won’t be happy to have something happen to you right now. Stay in his chambers at least until they carry the body away and a few days after.”

Lyanna had no wish to protest. For some reason, the sight of the dark-haired woman with a bulging belly and a ravished face made her feel much guiltier than even the insults of the crowd had. And the way the fair-haired one spoke Oberyn’s name, with the ease of long acquaintance tainted with bitterness towards his new wife made her sick. His whore might think he would leave her bed, now that he was a married man, but Lyanna knew better. He had not even bothered to prevent a meeting between her and his mistress – could she really expect any decency from him? Bastards, a mistress, all they shoved into her face – what should she expect next? Right now, she only wanted to leave all of this behind the door. But the shocks following so fast in each other’s wake would not let her either rest or think truly for the rest of the day.

Only when something heavy fell in bed partly on top of her in the pitch of the night did she remember that Obara Sand had said, _his_ chambers. Oberyn cursed and tore the bedcurtains apart to have a good look at her in the candlelight. “What are you doing here?” he asked angrily.

“ Here is where your aunt put me…” Lyanna started around the lump in her throat. For the first time, she saw him unprepared, with his guard lowered, just exhausted and anticipating some rest already. His eyes were bloodshot. He had wept a short time ago. And his weariness made it hard for him to maintain his chosen line of ignoring her. He was now seething with anger that he could not, perhaps did not even want to restrain.

“And you couldn’t say no or tell someone to inform me – you knew that I would have had you placed somewhere else before you could finish your meal! Because, of course, you always do what people tell you – except that you refused to even admit it at our bloody wedding!”

“I didn’t know…”

“Well, now you do – and I’ll be damned if I suffer you in my bed a moment longer. Gatur!” he yelled and Lyanna bristled.

“Careful, you’ll wake Jon up!” she snapped, right before realizing that perhaps this wasn’t the smartest thing to do. Her legs wooden, she wobbled towards the crib and took the crying babe, frantically trying to hush him.

Fortunately, Oberyn paid them no mind. He watched as his body servant gathered Lyanna’s basic belongings  and made them into a bundle. “Where should I bring them, my lord?” he asked.

Surprisingly, this simple question made Oberyn snap back to his senses. “Nowhere,” he said gruffly.

Of course it was nowhere. Of course. At least for a while, they needed to keep the pretences of a normal marriage of reconciliation – and moving her from his bedchamber in the middle of the night was everything but normal. He cursed and stormed away, leaving Lyanna to bitterly wonder if he had gone to the golden-haired woman – by now, she must have become sober!

The next day, she stood at the window and watched as the coffin was carried out of the Old Palace to the waiting ship. The streets were black with people, much more numerous than the ones that had come to witness Lyanna’s arrival. The weeping could be heard all the way to her windows and the words “the silver-haired lord” were repeated often. Gala had already told her that the late Errol Gargalen, Oberyn’s cousin, had been extremely popular with people, making friends wherever he went. For the first time, Lyanna couldn’t suppress the question that she had kept at bay until now: had it been the same when the news of her father and Brandon’s death had reached Winterfell? This grief? This drive to find someone to blame? She tried to make out Oberyn’s frame in the procession because she felt sure he was in danger right now – and if she was not his wife anymore, if he died, she would follow. If these people tore him apart, they would surely come for her…

But as loudly as the crowd shouted, the streets became quiet when the coffin actually reached them – or rather, Errol Gargalen’s young widow, holding two children by the hands and carrying the third one in her womb. As indecent as it was to expose one’s grief, Alynna Gargalen had refused to drape her black veil over her face, so everyone could see. She was more settled now but the agony was so clear that voices just became choked in people’s throat. Her mother walked beside her and at her other side, the fair-haired woman who was not Oberyn’s mistress but half-sister after all bit her lip in an effort no to cry herself. Lyanna cursed herself for her own weakness because for months, she had managed to keep the tears at bay even at the thought of her own tragedy. Would she start crying over theirs now?

As depressing as it was, she felt better in the ghost empty place that the Old Palace had become now, with everyone of note having left with the procession. She could walk through the halls, climb the staircases in the tall towers, explore gardens that looked as hard to care for as the ones in the North, and generally have more freedom than she had experienced ever since she had made her choice – to throw her lot in with Rhaegar… Truth be told, she expected the return of the court with great reluctance, although, of course, she was as much of a prisoner here as she had ever been.

Of course, everyone returned. The world was not going out of its way to meet her desires but Lyanna had already learned that, had she not? As early as the second day after their arrival, Oberyn took her to the great hall to sup and although he made some attempts to be courteous, he seemed relieved when his father took some of this burden – and Lyanna could say that her goodfather was much better at pretending than his son! He did treat her as he would have a cherished gooddaughter – but his dark eyes, so much like Oberyn’s, did not warm up for a moment, remembering her that it was all pretension. All in the name of peace. Of course, Oberyn’s two eldest daughters were in the hall as well – at the high table!

Not all in the name of peace. But she was in no state to place any conditions, right? After all, if her goodfather’s bastards had grown up at the same table, who would expect anything different from Oberyn? They would likely think that the Northern woman had got her due – if they even realized that to her, it was unacceptable. Oberyn’s father certainly did not look like he did. He treated them with the same fondness he gave his trueborn granddaughter and Lyanna felt stung at the realization that her child with Oberyn – because they would surely have one – would be placed the same in their family’s esteem as her lord husband’s bastards. Perhaps in even greater esteem because of their mother…

The third day after his return, Oberyn  arranged her moving out of his chambers. Lyanna had just gone back to make sure that the servants had not missed anything when she saw how he stopped dead in his tracks, staring at the other door. Her heart went cold when she realized that there was a woman in the door frame – and he did not look at her the way he did his sisters or cousins.

“I didn’t know you have come back, Ellaria,” he said.

“There was no reason for you to know, my prince,” she replied and Lyanna blinked. She had never heard such an ability to convey perfect politeness and cool dismissal in a single sentence. “I keep a limited correspondence.”

“And I’m not one of the people you keep it with,” he said. “I know.”

She made no answer and Lyanna felt some satisfaction at seeing his inviting smile die.

“I suppose you have come to see my sister?” he asked. “You were always friends.”

She nodded. “I heard about her struggles.” Now, it was politeness and rejection of any attempt to invite closeness through shared concern.

“Do take a seat.”

Without hesitation, she did which surprised Lyanna a little. Whatever this Ellaria’s story with Oberyn had been, it was clear that she was still enraged over something. In her place, Lyanna would have said that she could stay standing – which was still an improvement over what she would have said just a year ago!

The sun shone in the newcomer’s black hair and Lyanna held her breath. Ellaria was not beautiful but she was strangely captivating, with her sharp face and the exotic temptation that surrounded her without any effort – Loreza Sand had the same air when she was not rendered gibbering by her goblets. Oberyn seemed entranced.

“What happened?” Ellaria asked straight-forwardly. “I would have asked your cousins but Lady Alynna isn’t quite up to it. I need to know how bad it is if I am to help in any way.”

Oberyn hesitated and his expression became as helpless as it had been when he had watched Elia’s face when she had handed her children over to their nursemaids, to not see them again for years to come. “It’s very bad,” he said. “She’s desperate… and she has to reject a suit as well.”

Yes, Lyanna could say exactly whose suit it was! She held little respect for men who stood mooning over a woman openly but men mooning over a woman who was drinking as immoderately as Loreza Sand? It was a most undesired quality in a husband, let alone a wife!

Ellaria nodded. “That’s what I heard,” she said. “It will take time. Is it true? The other thing that I heard? The stillborn babe and… all of it?”

“Yes,” he said roughly and she rose.

“I see. Thank you for letting me know. It will be easier now. Thank you.”

She headed for the door but he stopped her. “Ellaria.”

“Yes?”

Now, he looked as uncertain as Lyanna had never seen him. “I didn’t know you’d take it like this. I mean, I thought you liked it different as well and…”

Her back was turned to Lyanna and it did not even go rigid. Her voice was only filled with patience. “I did like it different. I still do. But I can see that you haven’t changed at all. You still don’t know what you did wrong. I never liked to have things made different for me without letting me know. And what your cousin and you did was deprive me of choice. I am not going to just forget about it or behave like it didn’t matter. And now, I have to go.”

She left as gracefully as she had come. Oberyn was left to stare after her; Lyanna almost gasped when he spat an obscenity that she didn’t even know. Suddenly, the abject feeling in her stomach became almost unbearable.


	4. Chapter 4

She had become a prisoner again – a prisoner of the Old Palace, where she did not have three guards appointed to keep her inside. Her prison was of another kind. She actually wondered just how relieved her lord husband would feel if she happened to go out and disappear to her death in the narrow meandering lanes that the Dornish called streets! She herself was her own keeper and it felt worse than it had in the tower of horror! At least, there imprisonment had been forced on her – and of course, no one had been punished for this! She found some grim satisfaction in the idea that at least Arthur Dayne would be no more welcome to Starfall than she would be at Winterfell – Lady Ashara did not hide her feelings and her brother Lord Dayne did nothing to stop her. The pain was most evident in the old Lady Dayne’s face but she looked so much the Targaryen that she was that Lyanna could feel no compassion. _Her Grace should have really taught her grandson better_ , she often thought before remembering that Rhaegar had not known any better either, and guilt would stab at her again because for some reason, this palace which was nothing like the tower of her bliss and mortification had stirred up memories that she’d rather forget. The silent disapproval of the servants was very much like the one in the tower, and something that she had not expected to see in Dorne, with their loose morals. The way Lord Dayne talked charmingly to Lady Mellario, Oberyn’s cousins and practically all the women at the high table but had a little more than a few cursory words for Lyanna brought to life the careful lack of expression his brother had worn, the one that had first let her realize that Dorne was no safe heaven of approval and acceptance but a place that would tear her apart given the tiniest chance. With this, the unwelcome memories of doubt returned. How she had demanded to be finally wed before Rhaegar’s gods and hers like she had been promised and he had looked at her as if surprised that she expected of him to find a septon in the heart of the mountain – when he should have thought of this before making the promise! He had seemed unable to realize how important it was to her. She would never be the whore to Elia Martell’s princess! Not even for him!

Especially for him, as her memory reminded her but she refused to go back to the fights she had picked up with him because she had been unable to leave…

Now, no one stopped her but the opinion of Sunspear was clear. And there were only so many places and chambers in the Old Palace. She was getting reacquainted with the feeling of boredom again and this time, it included the wail of a babe. Before his birth, she had never imagined that it could be so long and piercing. She wanted to hide away from it, so she left her chambers and roamed about the palace, for she dared not let Jon out of her own dwelling place.

Ever so slowly, the novelty of her in the palace had started wearing off but no one could forget that she was the unwanted woman Oberyn Martell had forced on them. No one would. In the great hall, people no longer gave her covert looks but they did not care to engage her in a conversation, although there were topics that held her interest – to her bitter disappointment, many of them came from her husband. When she heard him talking about horses with his cousin Alor, the very image of him, save for the battle wounds sapping his strength, she listened eagerly, burning with desire to join in, ask questions, offer an opinion. Pride would not let her say anything but it did not save her from suffering.

At night, Oberyn came to her frequently and as much as she hated her weakness, she waited for him eagerly. Their couplings were actually quite pleasant and which was even more important, his visits let the world know that he did not find her unappealing. Robert’s straying would have been bad enough but a husband who never shared her bed? Lyanna did not want to give everyone even more fodder for derisive gossip, although it occurred to her a few times that she had been ready to do the same thing to Elia Martell without ever giving it a thought what it would have meant for the other woman.

“Do you hope I give you a son?” she asked him one night when he seemed not to be in a hurry to rise, dress, leave her chamber for his own bedchamber – and his other woman, Lyanna supposed. She had seen how he looked at Ellaria Sand when he thought no one watched.

He shrugged. “A daughter’s going to suit me just fine,” he said and Lyanna’s heart sank. She had hoped that once she gave him a son, he’d show her some respect and not force her to share a roof with his bastards. But it seemed that to him, it would make no difference either way. Lyanna would mean just as little to him as the women who had given him his daughters – she had already heard that one of them was a common whore!

The feeling that she did not belong here, that his bastards did more than her grew every day. The girls not only would not go anywhere, they were everywhere. Little Tyene was Princess Arianne’s closest friend and they could rarely be seen apart – Lyanna could see that Mellario of Norvos did not quite approve but she did not disapprove either. The girl they called Lady Nym was gliding up and down halls and courts with grace that was still unattainable for Lyanna, for all that Nymeria was considerably younger. She went to the market with Oberyn’s cousin, a beauty of deformed hand and rumoured Blackfyre heritage that had likely been one of the reasons she had not been chosen for Rhaegar – the old gods and new could see that she had the looks! She also had the manners of queen… if queens went out in the streets and returned as loaded as their handmaidens and guards. Lyanna gasped when she saw the fabrics and jewels Naeryn and Nymeria had bought. She had never paid much attention to clothes, especially when Rhaegar had liked her for her knightly heart and not her attire, and she was surprised at how drawn she was to the violet silk, the scarlet velvet, the heavy pair of gold bracelets that resembled gauntlets. Did her womanly nature have to wake up in Dorne, of all places? The longing to go out in this brilliant sunlight and weave her way through the shadowed bazaars she had only heard about was almost an ache. In the solar Mellario invited her in to keep appearances and make awkward attempts to include her, Lyanna could see Naeryn teaching Lady Nym into the little tricks of womanhood and knew that the girl was here to stay.

With Obara, the situation was even worse. The way she treated Loreza was a strange mix of protectiveness and patronizing derision to someone so hopelessly stupid. She stopped her when she was on the verge to pass out from drinking, padded after her on surprisingly soft feet in the hallways, and scolded her with such tired anger that Lyanna felt sure that Loreza would not tolerate it for longer.

If Lyanna would not be listened to, Loreza had a fighting chance to get the girl moved out of the Old Palace…

But she would not do this. For all her muttering and glaring, she seemed actually content to have a hound like Obara Sand, despite the fact that they could rarely be in each other’s company without clashing, and Oberyn smiled each time he saw his sister angry enough to speak coherently and impassionedly. His love for them could just be seen in his eyes and Lyanna felt excluded, unwanted, and dejected.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with you,” Obara would say often, in different variations. “I understand that you’re grieving your babe and you’re grieving him but you have a son. You still have a child. As to him, I really don’t get it. In the brothels, only stupid girls got in love and you aren’t stupid. Wash your face, put some velvet and gold on, and have a good look at the mirror. What, exactly, do you lack? You can have any man you want. Many of them will even marry you.”

Lyanna had thought that she herself was outspoken but such a brutal understanding of facts shocked even her. Her astonishment must have shown because Loreza gave her a sharp look and Lyanna got her meaning immediately: as ugly as this relaying of facts had sounded, to these women Lyanna’s own love story was even uglier.

“I agree about the mirror part,” Ellaria Sand said softly and the combined forces of Obara and Ellaria made Loreza yield: she went to the mirror and started fixing her hair… and when Oberyn came in, his look of affection included the three of them – his daughter, his sister and his… what? Lyanna grounded her teeth but the thought of her son in her chambers made her bit her tongue and not show the ugly outburst of a rejected wife.

* * *

When she first saw Loreza with little Mariah in her arms, Lyanna’s first impulse was to snatch the babe to safety. Loreza was as drunk as ever, albeit not quite falling from her chair. The infant cooed at her happily, not noticing the tears that were falling on her soft cheeks. Lyanna was surprised at how much the babe had grown in the time she had not seen her. However, it was not big enough to be left safely in the arms of a drunken woman and Lyanna noticed more than one pair of eyes following Loreza’s every movement warily. But no one dared tell her that she’d better leave the little girl.

When she told Oberyn, he did not look this concerned either. “Obara is there,” he said, “and the handmaidens. Loreza isn’t this far off as to be unsafe.”

“No, she isn’t this far off,” Lyanna agreed. “She’s worse off! The carpets are not thick enough to absorb every fall. She isn’t safe to have a babe left in her arms right now.”

Oberyn waved a hand wearily, sighed, paused before answering. “You know that Loreza’s babe died?” he asked and Lyanna nodded. “Since then, she’s been trying to forget but her body does not cooperate. They can’t get her milk to stop, although there has never been a babe to take suck. Last night, after accidentally nursing Mariah, Loreza only drank one goblet of wine and her attendants are telling us that she did not wake them up with her nightmares. Rhaenys is Loreza’s own boy’s age and they seem to get along quite well. Perhaps these children will be the key to her recovery.”

Lyanna was not sure that she had heard right. “And you’re ready to risk these children’s wellbeing just for the potential sake of your bastard…” she started and then clapped her hand over her mouth. But it was too late.

Oberyn’s breath hissed between his teeth. He laughed ugly, disbelievingly. “And you _dare_ bring up their wellbeing…” he said in wonder.

Lyanna raised her chin. “Do you think your true sister will be glad to hear how you use them?”

Oberyn’s eyes glinted. “Do not ever speak of my sisters,” he said very softly and coldly. “Either true or bastard one. They’re too above your own person to hear their names sullied by you. And I have to say you have quite the nerve, bringing up Elia’s children wellbeing. Do you think I believe for a moment that you care? I’m having them protected from the only one who was proven in her desire to do them harm, my lady, and this was you.”

She gasped. “Who do you take me for?” she yelled, indignation overcoming sound judgment. “A monster who wishes ill upon children?”

He shrugged. “With the way you signed them for war in the not so distant future over Rhaegar’s succession, I don’t think for a moment that you sincerely wish them good.”

Lyanna blushed because it was true that sometimes, she had imagined how their son, Rhaegar and hers, would succeed them, take his father’s throne. It has always been a guilty dream and no intention but Oberyn had this way to make her feel guilty even for her guilty dreams. “I wasn’t planning to take the throne from Aegon,” she said because it was the truth.

He wasn’t impressed. “For now,” he said. “For now. Whatever, I don’t want to hear their names from you. They might go into my sister’s care – you’re a little late with your concern.”

Late. Always late. 

* * *

 

 The day the three children were moved to Loreza Sand’s chambers, there was something like celebration in the Martell family – improvised and without Lyanna, of course, in Mellario’s solar. Lyanna’s heart skipped a beat when she saw Ellaria Sand smiling at Oberyn in a way she had never before, joy bringing her defences down. He replied with a smile of his own and Lyanna walked out with her head held high, although her anger boiled – not at the infatuation but the lack of any discretion. But at the evening feast, the defences were up again.”

“What do you want of me, Prince Oberyn?” Lyanna heard the other woman mutter from her place at Loreza’s side.

Oberyn’s reply was so soft that Lyanna only heard it because she was listening so intently. “To love me again, Ellaria,” he said.

Lyanna’s fingers closed around her goblet of wine and squeezed until she felt pain. But she did not splash the wine in his face, no matter how much she wanted to.


	5. Chapter 5

Forget about her.

This had been Lyanna’s dream for so long. Have everyone forget about her. Get sent to some castle in the middle of nowhere and stay there with no one coming to visit until the reality of Oberyn Martell being married faded from everyone’s mind. The old gods themselves could stand witness that people already did their best in this regard!

But no one would send her when all she had wanted had been to hide from the eyes of all those who studied her in a covert but unfriendly way. And now, as life passed by her, with her being a politely ignored observer, she realized that this was no longer her wish. Riding for hours, practicing with arms – these had been things that she had cherished but she had never realized that they could never replace the human contact. Now, when she was deprived of both, she had come to feel that the lack of people, the lack of connection was what haunted her most.  It would not be remedied with her being thrown in the middle of nowhere, with a household made of servant and spies.

She was not used to being overlooked… And a babe, even her own, could not fill her entire world.

“That was what Princess Elia felt like as well,” Gala said when Lyanna shared this with her. “When she was on her bedrest, she wanted people to visit her every day. Prince Rhaegar disapproved. He said she was irresponsible to her own health…”

Lyanna did not appreciate the reminder that the woman who shared her life more closely than her lord husband had once been in Elia’s service. Everything in her life seemed to have belonged to Elia first. Even Rhaegar’s reproaches… because he had not been this different with Lyanna during _her_ pregnancy either. At the time, she had thought it was a way to show his love and concern for her, as inadequate as this way was. But it hurt to face the possibility that it had been just his character.

 _If I were bedridden, I would have only taken interest in my child,_ she told herself because it was uncomfortable to remember just how convinced she had been that Elia Martell was a shallow woman who had shown that Rhaegar and her babe were not enough. Now, when her own babe was not enough, she had to go deeper because she was not like Elia at all, she was not!

Still, the truth of the matter was that a lonely castle was not for her. She had to make friends, win positions here if she wanted to have any life anywhere in Dorne. But how was she to start it? She sat at the window, stared at the courtyard below and tried to find a way.

She was not likely to make any friends at the evening feast. The high table was too solitary a place, filled with Martells and official guests. It was all formality. No, the morning meal was a better bet. It was just the family and their friends – which meant the friends of each member of the family. One day, these friends would get used to her, perhaps bring friends of their own who might relate to her better. She was Lyanna of House Stark, after all. This should mean something, even if the North was so far away.

People need not know that her own brother had forsaken her.

And even if she just kept being ignored, she preferred this to being absent. She would not make Oberyn’s life easier by relieving him of her presence. And being around the family without attracting notice would make it easier for them to forget about her and not bother with sending her away.

One day, they would get used to her.

She despised herself for making plans to relieve her starvation. But pride meant little when the other option was go mad with solitude. The memory of the solitude Rhaegar had doomed her to kept returning. She had been almost broken for a few months; she would never make it through a few _years_.

But her plans for going through the motions were not made easier by the fact that Loreza kept bringing Ellaria Sand at the table. Lyanna had decided that the knowledge of the other woman having been a kept mistress – a mistress paid with _money_ – of another man would bring Oberyn back to his senses but to her horror, it did not seem to matter to him. He kept staring at her as if she were the most beautiful, the worthiest lady in the land when not one of the three was true! She rarely returned his looks but when she did, Lyanna felt sure that it was just a matter of time. The man had no shame! Parading his interest in another woman in his wife’s face! His interest in a common whore! At least the woman did not make any attempt to engage Lyanna in a conversation.

It only occurred to Lyanna days after the first breakfast of this kind that she had not even taken the woman’s bastardy into consideration. Her skin crawled. Had she taken to Dornish immorality the way she had gotten used to their speech and meals? Was she going to lose her morals here? It was a very disheartening thought to entertain.

* * *

“You aren’t obliged to come and break your fast with us, you know.”

Here. There it was. The dismissal. Lyanna’s heart went to her throat. The solar suddenly swirled around her. She should have known that her husband had not followed her to have a nice conversation. There was nothing nice about his voice. “Am I forbidden from taking my meals with the family?” she asked evenly.

“It depends.”

She wanted to slap him. Who did he think he was, to place conditions? Did he think he was her master or…

But he was, of course. She took a deep calming breath. “On what?”

“If you can hide your distaste.”

She immediately understood what he meant and blushed furiously. “I’m trying!”

“Try harder.”

“What am I supposed to do?”

Oberyn pretended to think before shooting her a look of dislike like the one he had worn at their betrothal, like the one she had seen when she had made the mistake of speaking out about Loreza.

“I don’t know. Perhaps realize that he is one of us and you are no one here? The Old Palace has been my brother’s home since he was born and I won’t let anyone make him feel uncomfortable during meals with the family.”

Lyanna had not thought it was this obvious. But yes, she would have preferred if Elvar Sand took his morning meal in his chamber, like he did with his evening one. His facial injury, the distorted mouth simply made the sight of him eating unseemly, food falling down and the skin under his lips filling out in a most disgusting manner with every bite he took…

“I’m trying,” she said.

“He can see this. This isn’t enough.”

All of a sudden, she flared up. “What else am I supposed to try harder? I’ve been trying patience ever since I came to his hot hell! I’m trying with your precious bastard brother as well! Don’t tell me that he’s so surprised. I’ve been hearing that the only way he can bed a woman is to pay her…”

She immediately knew that she should not have said this. She had never seen this hot anger in Oberyn’s eyes. She gasped but her damned tongue was quicker than her mind. “By the gods, it’s true! He got this when he saved you and your cousins from a mischief that you got running despite being warned that it was dangerous!” She had not given this rumour much of attention. It was just something that she had heard the servant girls in the halls whisper to each other.

She thought that he would hit her. Hit her hard enough to send her spinning against the wall… Instead, the most peculiar thing happened. Oberyn brought his raised arm down. Looked her in the eye. Nodded curtly. “Yes. In the aftermath, we got sent back to Hellholt where we were fostered. And by Doran’s order, nothing was said to us about his state. For three months, we did not know if he lived. I thought if he did not, if he had died because of me…” He paused. “It seems that we have something in common, my lady. Would I have it be a more fortunate thing…”

He strode away without another word and Lyanna collapsed on the floor and howled, tears cascading down her cheeks in an outpour. Brandon! What she would not give to have him back, have him got away with a mere disfigurement of his face!

This day, she wept like she had not since the day she had heard of their deaths, the day she had cursed Rhaegar and Harrenhal.

In her own estimation, she did not do anything different than the days before, but the subject of her being prohibited from family meals did not come up again.

* * *

 

 Life went on. Alynna Gargalen’s belly grew bigger until Lyanna could no longer stand the sight of it because this was what Elia had looked like while carrying Rhaegar’s child – the child that Rhaegar had fathered on her after being with Lyanna! The letters and asks for audience with Doran or his father from a certain man became almost a part of their morning meal routine and Lyanna wondered why they would not simply say yes. A lord’s son was a better match than any bastard woman could hope for, let alone one who had already been wed.

“Why don’t you say yes?” she asked one night at the evening feast, curiosity getting the better of her.

“Because my daughter doesn’t want him,” her goodfather replied. “You can take a horse to water…”

“I don’t like the look of him,” Obara cut in. “Lately, he’s been staring at her in another way. Send him away,” she said.

Lyanna laughed. “Are you afraid of him?” she teased, knowing that this was a thing that Obara could never let go unanswered.

Just as she had expected, the girl’s face flushed which did not make her any prettier. “I’m not afraid of anything!”

“Are you sure?”

“What is he going to do?” Alric asked; shocked, Lyanna realized that there was some worry in his voice. Even he took Oberyn’s bastard seriously!

“A wise man would not do anything,” Obara said. “But this one is not in his senses…”

 _Like the one who supposedly raped her_? Lyanna wondered. That made two men already. Two men not in their senses over the same woman – and no one thought anything about this?

She could not wait to find some friends of her own because her new family was so blind that she could not even fathom it. Wilful blindness was a terrible thing to live with.

* * *

The first time Lyanna felt hope was the day she came upon Ellaria Sand yelling – she, and too many from court. Oberyn was yelling right back and Lyanna felt shamed and worthless because no one could mistake what the feeling lying between them was. The air stirred with it. Red hot passion…

Lyanna ordered to herself not to listen to the whispers behind her back. This was the end. For real. Love or not, Oberyn would put an end to it now. No man would keep sighing after a woman who had humiliated him so. A bastard born paid woman! And he a prince! Lyanna was surprised that the woman had let go of her oh so ladylike manners but she was so glad!

The end of it, the end of it, the end of it…

This night, Ellaria Sand did not appear in the great hall. Had she left the Old Palace already? Lyanna did not really expect her husband in her chambers already but as the night grew, his absence started feeling strangely oppressive. Had he taken someone to his bed already? Yes, most likely! The Red Viper of Dorne would not grieve over a woman, no matter which one.

Still, the silence became heavier and heavier until Lyanna felt that she had to know what was going on. Who could say that he was not whiling the night away with another mistress – one that would like to rub Lyanna’s face in the relationship? She’d better be prepared…

Nearing his chambers, she saw his silhouette in a hallway ahead of her. Her heart beating wildly, she followed.

Ellaria Sand met him with a dagger in her hand and Oberyn was just as surprised as Lyanna. Surprised enough not to look twice at the curtain that he had come through. Lyanna came closer and peeped carefully around the dark velvet. The torchlight gleamed against the bare blade. Lyanna saw the wild fear in the woman’s eyes, the face that was so contorted with terror that Elvar Sand’s face would look symmetrical in comparison.

Oberyn stood frozen. Then, he made a step forward. “You have long stabbed me in the heart anyway, you know,” he said and Lyanna set her teeth.

Ellaria’s hand went down, her fingers opened and the dagger fell on the carpet. “I thought it was the black-robed man.”

“The black-robed man? The executioner? By the Seven! You thought I would pick up my rose? How could it ever occur to you that I’d extinguish my light?”

Lyanna wanted to take the dagger and use it herself! She had not even known that her lord husband was a poet! Why, he might compare to Rhaegar, why not? And he was using his gift on another woman!

“Today, I lost my temper. I yelled at you in front of everyone.”

He went closer and raised a hand. Lyanna wanted to slap both of them when this hand settled on Ellaria’s hair and she did not protest.

“You have lived in Essos too long. Are you a slave that can be disposed of? And I, a slavemaster? “

She did not reply. Her chest was rising and falling.

“And even I was, what would I do without you? How do you think I would live?”

Ellaria did draw back then and Lyanna could see the daggers in her eyes. “Just the way you do. You’re going to live very merrily in the arms of all girls in Sunspear…”

“Are you jealous? You’re even prettier like this but I somehow feel that it won’t be enough to make you…”

“No,” Ellaria said. “It isn’t enough. Why are you here? And how do you intend to punish me? Come on, my lord prince, speak out! You know that you have no reason to fear the bastard…”

He shrugged. “I can’t say I enjoyed it but… I humiliated you before and you humiliated me now. It’s only fair.”

She laughed bitingly. “Since when do you care about fairness? How many girls have you played your game with since it was over between us? You and your damned cousin! I had heard that you were sharing girls, that you were bragging that no girl could tell you apart in bed but I didn’t think you’d ever use this trick on me… For some reason, I thought it was different. I thought you loved me. Can you believe this? I thought you loved me! The prince and the poor girl. The bastard.”

He tried to reach out for her again but she pushed his hands back.

“I did,” he said. “I do. And there hasn’t been a single trick since you left me. Alor and I both regretted it…”

“I can believe it about him,” she said. “He did seem pretty shaken when I called him out on his trick. Not about you, though. You aren’t sorry for what you did to me. You’re only sorry because I recognized him before you could tell me about the great jest.”

Oberyn shook his head. “No. You were different. You did like games and things that other girls would shriek at. I thought you’d like it. I thought you’d find it funny…”

She laughed again and to Lyanna, the sound bordered on hysteria. Yes, that was what ladies did. When they faced something unpleasant, they went in hysteria. Never mind that her own heart was beating faster.

“You thought I’d feel a different sort of caresses, I’d wonder what was going on and I’d like it?”

He nodded.

“You thought I’d see you in the half-light – as I thought, - you… he… would nod at me to go to bed without bothering to say a word and I’d like it?”

“He could hardly speak. At the time, you already knew my voice well enough…”

Gods, what a fool! He’d achieve much more if he just kept his mouth shut but he looked unable to in his desperate desire to justify himself. Lyanna was not surprised that the woman did not fall for this.

“You thought I’d find himself in bed in with a man I had not consented to make love with, realize that I had made love with a stranger – and I’d like it?”

This time, Oberyn did not offer any justification. “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “And still, I can feel you have not grown cold towards me. I’ll never show disrespect to your wishes again, Ellaria. And I can say you want to be with me. Why don’t you say yes?”

“Because you don’t want to be with me just because you want to be with me, Oberyn. You want to make me yours again so you know that you did. So you can score a victory. I thought you loved me for me. It turned out that you loved me because my tastes suited your own. There are many more beautiful women who can give you the peculiarities you seek without burdening you with things like pride and respect.”

“Don’t fear,” he said. “There won’t be a beauty in this world or the next who can part me from you. Say yes…”

Lyanna could not listen anymore. She had never thought that the Red Viper was capable of loving a woman. _She’s right_ , she thought desperately. _He only wants her because she left him…_ _When he gets her again, he’s going to get bored…_ The alternative did not bear thinking about.

* * *

 “Is Oberyn here?”

“He isn’t here at this time of the day,” Lyanna replied with more warmth that she usually directed at Loreza. If Loreza was looking for her brother, then he was not in her chambers with her sweet friend…

Loreza sighed. “I wanted to ask him something but I suppose I can get the book I need from his chamber now and talk to him later.”

Lyanna shrugged indifferently. If she had said no, Loreza would have still done what she wanted. This was not even Lyanna’s solar, it was Oberyn’s, although she could not say what she was doing here. Showing that no matter whom  he had in his bed, it was his lady wife in his solar? She had never thought she’d fall as low as relying on such womanly art of demonstration but here she was.

The man arrived not a minute later. Loreza’s admirer. To talk to Oberyn. Lyanna was in equal parts amused and derisive of his desperate attempts to get the woman. After failing with Alric and Doran, he wanted to talk to Oberyn...

“My lord husband isn’t here,” she said. “But Lady Loreza is. If you wish to talk to her instead…”

His eyes gleamed in a way that made her shake her head behind him – because he was so quick to agree that he said so on his way to the door already.

Finally, there would be a decent wedding in this palace. He’d convince Loreza to stop her games and take her to his own home. Lyanna would not be sorry to see her gone. It was no secret to her that despite holding Oberyn at fault for his breakup with Ellaria Sand, she wanted to see the two of them together. She wanted her brother to be happy and Lyanna’s pride was not part of her considerations at all.

With Loreza, the children would also leave. Lyanna could not say that she would not feel better if she did not see Rhaegar’s children in the palace. And if Obara left as well, Lyanna would celebrate privately.

“What are you doing here?” Oberyn’s voice startled her and she decided to skip the excuse she had at the ready.

“There’s going to be a wedding here soon,” she said. “Ser Erven is talking to Loreza right now…”

He snorted. “My father just told him to stop his attempts. He won’t get Loreza. I’m amazed that you let him in.”

“Where are they?” Obara cut in.

“In the…” Lyanna felt that she went pale. “She was in your bedchamber but…”

“Bad,” Obara said, already running for the door.

“Wait!” Oberyn yelled, rushing after her. “You think he…”

Their worry immediately infected Lyanna. She lifted her skirts and followed suit… to see Oberyn pounding on the door of his own bedchamber. “Open this door!” he yelled. “Now!”

The realization descended upon Lyanna, hitting her with a wave of horror. This door was locked. Barred. _What have I done?_

“I’ll force it open!” Oberyn yelled. “Open it right now!”

There was no answer from the inside. Just silence. Then, something between laughter and sob.

Oberyn grabbed the nearest bench – Lyanna had never realized just how strong he was – and slammed it against the door.

It broke in splinters and Lyanna screamed.

There was only one person in the chamber. A man in the throes of death, his hand still holding the dagger that he had pushed in his heart himself.

The window was open.

 


	6. Chapter 6

For a long time afterwards, Lyanna dreamed of Oberyn falling down. In a desperate attempt to catch his sister, he grabbed the windowsill with one hand and reached for Loreza with the other, leaned over, further and further down, until he slipped and…

Of course, it did not happen this way. No one could say for sure if the window had been open, or had Loreza managed to open it, led by her despair, but when the mad man had reached for her with his dagger, she had already been in the process of jumping down – and the floor was quite high. The blade had reached her, though, and she had remained there, on her side, without moving on the carpet of bushes that were so strong that even her fall from this high did not break them.

And Oberyn had not thrown himself after her. After a single look at the mad man, he had not even bothered to make sure he was dead – he had simply thrown his own dagger at Obara, trusting her to deal with the situation if this was not the case. He had rushed for the window, keeping enough presence of mind to realize that it would be faster if he simply crawled down the tree planted before the next window, than if he went all the way to the first floor and circle around the building.

In his Water Gardens childhood, there had been a girl from a mummer show teaching them feats of agility…

“She’s alive!” Oberyn shouted and by the time servants and men and women gently born rushed out into the garden, he had already grabbed his sister, carrying her like a child into the palace.

For the first time, Lyanna realized that he was not just swift and lithe. There was some great strength in him as well.

Maesters came running from all sides. Mellario turned pale and ordered septas and servants to keep the children in their rooms. Alric’s voice came, asking sharply what was going on. He was looking at Lyanna, recognizing immediately that she was someone who knew but she could not tell him, so he pushed his way past her and she saw how he stopped dead in his tracks when he saw his daughter.

No one could say if she was dead or alive… She had been alive when Oberyn had felt her pulse but the blood gushing down the front of her robe might be taking her life away…

“She lives,” Obara said, pale but quite business-like, loud enough for everyone to hear her. “Don’t be fools. A dead woman doesn’t bleed.”

Her father turned his head to look at her. “You knew.”

“I’ve seen this glow in the eyes of many a man in Oldtown,” the girl said. “It always ended in deaths, maimings, blood feuds, and some money to be given to the city watch.”

Not _much_ money, Lyanna noticed. How much was a whore’s death worth? She had never thought about this. She had never even _heard_ much about this.

“The girl is right, my lord,” an old maester panted as he shoved his way into the chamber. “Bleeding means living. But we must now stop the bleeding before trying to ascertain what injuries she has sustained from the fall.”

What surprised Lyanna most was the fact that no one seemed to blame her. Oberyn who was always so defensive of his sister didn’t even tell her to go away because she did not belong here, after letting the murderer inside to find Loreza. The rest of highborn did not know and while she could hear the servants whisper, she knew it would be some time before the news reached the ear of the ones who had the power to make her pay, as if she was an accomplice – when she had only wanted the best for the golden-haired woman.

But when everyone came – Doran, very pale but in control of himself, Alor who looked so much like Oberyn but a still recovering one, the disfigured Elvar, the Elia lookalike with her bulging belly – the feeling that she did not belong, that she had done this to Loreza was urgent enough to get Lyanna rise from her chair near the wall in the antechamber and leave, go to the safety of her own chambers, more shaken that she wanted to admit.

As he headed for the door, Oberyn looked up, straight into her eye. Lyanna expected to hear the question if she was running away, if she was scared, if… But he looked away, forgetting about her immediately and Lyanna felt the irony of it – because she _was_ scared. She _was_ running away…

She spent the rest of the day holding her son until her arms ached. He was getting so big. For the first time, she wondered if Loreza Sand was still heartbroken that she could not hold her child. If little Mariah was really a cure for her.

A little before sunset, they moved Loreza back to her chambers. Lyanna saw the wooden stretcher, the pale face and the long hair dangling from the stretcher. Somehow, this little bit of disarray looked more terrible than the lack of control Loreza had exhibited while drunk.

She was still alive. Lyanna’s relief was immediate, her spirits soaring, only to be slammed back against the ground when she saw the faces of the maesters surrounding the stretcher.

For how long?

This first night, she did not go to sleep at all. She thought of taking Jon to her own chamber but decided against it, just in case. Instead, she kissed him and made herself ready for bed as usual. What was not usual was the dagger she hid under the bedcover, a blade she had taken straight from the Martells’ armoury. The old armourer had been quite surprised to hear her order to give her one but had not objected. She was a Martell as well now, was she not?

Lyanna Martell. She repeated the name a few times, just to hear the strange sound it made when it rolled off her tongue as she waited, all ears. She did not know what she would do when he did but the blade made her feel more confident.

She waited because she was sure he would come. Any moment now, he would remember the part that she had played in his family’s tragedy for the second time – a third time, actually – and he would come to punish her, make her pay. She remembered what he had done to Ellaria Sand and her skin crawled. He loved the woman, she had to admit – but he had hurt her in such a manner.

Her, Lyanna, he did not even love…

Dawn came, pale and grey, and shimmering hopelessness all around. An entire night had passed. Stunned, Lyanna realized that he would not come, after all. She looked at the door one last time – for she had decided against using the latch after all – and finally sank into the sleep of dead.

* * *

When she woke up, it was past noon and the entire castle was full of angry murmur, like a wave. The sea was rebelling, it seemed. Lyanna summoned Gala and with her heart in her mouth asked if there were any news about Loreza.

“Nothing,” the maidservant said.

Lyanna tried to tell herself it was a good thing but she could not believe things would go the way they should. When had they ever? As she broke her belated fast, forcing herself to open her mouth and take one bite after another, her thoughts turned to the part she had played in this, her own judgment. She had displayed a wrong one again – and while a wrong judgment was not as bad as the appalling one she had shown in her attitude to Rhaegar’s charms, it could still claim the life of an innocent woman.

Appalling judgment. She stopped eating as, for the first time, she admitted the truth that she had avoided all this time. She had never wished to hurt anyone, but she had a terrible problem with her judgment. Once again, she had shown sympathy where none had been due and abetted the victimhood of someone who had not deserved it at all. Loreza Sand could have been anyone – any of the men of the North who had died with Brandon; any of the men who had lost their lives on the battlefield; any of the widows with hungry babes to feed. She had let the mad knight near Loreza, had told him where to find her, and she had turned her back to everything other than Rhaegar. She remembered telling him that she did not care about the consequences – but then she had denied that these were any consequences at all. It was always someone else’s fault. Now, the truth stared her in the face, its teeth bared: if she had not invited the man, Loreza would have been unscathed.

If she had not said yes, then… then what? She shuddered at the thought that Rhaegar might not have taken no for an answer but there was a certain appeal to this prospect as well. She needed not feel guilty if he had been this determined. Her bad judgment had nothing to do with what had transpired at all.

It surprised her how easy it felt now to admit that she lacked as good understanding of people as she had flattered herself that she possessed.

Gala had promised to come back with news as soon as there were any but as the early afternoon turned into late one, her uneasiness got the better of her. Despite knowing that she should just stay where she was, she headed for Doran’s solar  and by the looks everyone she met gave her, she realized that the word had spread. Now, everyone knew what she had done.

“What are you doing here?” Alric asked the moment she passed through the door. “Do you not have any shame?”

Despite her determination, she recoiled. In comparison to him, his son Elvar looked downright handsome. Alric’s features looked… mismatched, as if pain and worry had taken parts big and small out of him, literally. It was obvious that he had not slept at all. He looked aged by years over the course of just one night. The eyes that had always been… well, not warm, not when turned to her but civil and unwilling to add to her distress now ripped her apart in the manner Oberyn had had when confronting her about his sisters.

Unlike Oberyn, though, he did not focus on her. He turned back to the door and did not seem to care if Lyanna stayed or left. The others took their cues from him and did not evict her, nor invited her to stay; after a brief hesitation, she took a seat – next to Oberyn’s whore, as she realized with horror just a moment too late.

Ellaria Sand looked greatly disturbed. Lyanna should have expected to see her here – she was Loreza’s friend, after all. But she had not and she had the acute feeling that should she rise, everyone would turn against her. She might be Lyanna Martell, but Ellaria was the one they all liked.

Fortunately, the woman had as much desire to stay seated next to Lyanna as Lyanna herself. She rose and Lyanna felt grateful and somehow full of admiration for the woman’s grace. She knew that she would not have been able to do the same for Elia Martell.

To her surprise, Oberyn was nowhere to be seen. She had expected to see him pacing and focusing with his entire being with what was happening behind the door, the way he had done throughout Elia’s labour.

“They let us stay with her one at a time,” Elvar said softly. “Oberyn is there. Do you want a goblet?”

He was about to turn and go look for one but Lyanna stopped him. She had seen that the one in his hand was full of water. “May I have this?” she asked and saw the surprise flickering on the good part of his face. For the first time, she realized that he had been born a very handsome man.

“Are you going to feed it to her as well?” Naeryn Sand demanded, her eyes ripping into her cousin’s. “She can take care of herself, I’m sure.”

“Not so loud,” Elvar hissed. “There isn’t going to be any fights here. They’re the last thing my father needs right now.”

Naeryn glared at both of them but went silent. Lyanna drank from Elvar’s goblet and felt that she would not have cared even if she had drunk from the same spot his torn mouth had touched. Deep inside, she was already sorry for having been so disgusted by him. Hadn’t she learned her lesson that silver perfection could lead one to the worst of harms? Lead tens of hundreds to the worst of harms, more precisely! This small unexpected kindness stirred something in her heart. From this moment on, his feelings for her notwithstanding, she truly loved Elvar like a brother. She would not care if at an official feast, she got placed next to him and had to share his goblet as some old customs demanded in certain situations.

“Are there any news?” she asked and Elvar shook his head.

“Not yet, my lady. Not yet.”

Time went on in grim silence. The shadows behind the window became long and a purple mist shimmered into the windows. Oberyn came in and Lyanna gasped when she saw the welts on his face, the mud and holes in his clothes.

“There has been no change,” he said immediately and his eyes immediately went to Ellaria. Lyanna was saddened but not surprised to see that in the woman’s expression, there was none of the caution and distrust from before. The concern about one and the same person had brought them together – even if they were not together yet. The connection was there, as thick as a rope and as bright as hope and this made Lyanna’s heart ache with longing. It was as if for a moment, no one else existed for those two.

A servant came in and told something to Alric who looked surprised. “This isn’t the time,” he said but Oberyn quickly interrupted his idyll with Ellaria to interrupt, “Why? I think it’s just the right time. If it wasn’t for his damned son, Erven would have never thought of wedding Loreza, is this not right? Because she would have still been wed to Gillerd! Polygamy isn’t in style these days.”

No one was looking at Lyanna but she blushed anyway. She had believed, been certain that Dorne would not mind her marrying Rhaegar because Dornish were… were like Oberyn…

“Bring him here,” Oberyn said and looked at his father who shrugged.

“Do whatever you want,” he said indifferently. “It doesn’t matter now. She’s in this chamber fighting for her life and he can’t make it better.”

When Lord Vaith was announced, Lyanna almost jumped. This was the man whose son had forced himself on Loreza! Whose son had been killed by Loreza’s husband in cold blood! She stared at his slender figure and erect posture with distaste before realizing that now, she accepted Loreza’s side of the story with no reservations.

“I hope your daughter is well, my lord,” the man said, addressing Alric who shrugged. “It seems that the whole of Sunspear hopes for the same. Smallfolk is making their feelings quite clear.”

A little bell rang a warning in Lyanna’s mind but she pushed it back, engrossed in the exchange.

“My sister is going to recover,” Oberyn stated. “The Seven keep good people safe and give evil people their due,” he added meaningfully.

The man nodded. “I’ve been thinking about this for a while,” he said. “I wanted to apologize.”

Now, this was a surprise! Lyanna could say that she was not the only one stunned, nor the only one sceptical.

“Indeed!” Oberyn said very, very softly. Lyanna had never heard this tone but to her, it screamed danger.

“Yes,” the newcomer said. “At the time, I wasn’t thinking clearly but later, I realized that there was no way for five people, three of whom not known to be Gillerd Gargalen’s friends, to lie about what happened. Every man is entitled to defend his wife and her honour by the people who try to do them harm.”

Oberyn raised an eyebrow. “What a nice revelation,” he said dryly. “Of course, my cousin is now banished and gone and my sister is fighting the Stranger but I’m so glad that you have relieved your conscience.”

“I am sorry,” Lord Vaith repeated. “For both my son’s actions and my own during the trial.”

“Vaith, do I need to tell you where to shove your regrets?” Alric spoke for the first time, not bothering to hide his anger. “You aren’t sorry for what your son, the rapist, did to my Loreza. You aren’t sorry for using all your influence to force our hand into sending my nephew away. You’re only scared that in my anger, I’m now going to remember who it all started with – and you are right. If my daughter doesn’t make it, I will destroy you and your entire House – and don’t you think the Yronwoods can stop me, no matter how much unrest they stir against us! They will fail again and your entire House will be wiped away. I suggest that you pray for my daughter’s recovery. Now, go away before I throw you out personally!”

His cynicism corresponded with Lyanna’s view of the matter but she was relieved when Elvar followed after the man and said something to him. Someone had to be the voice of reason, after all. She remembered Ned and bit her lip because she was going to cry. He would never be the voice of reason again. Not her voice of reason anyway.

“Open this window,” Alric said. “The air has suddenly become filthy.”

Someone did and the roar came again. This time, Lyanna recognized it for what it was. Not the roar of the sea. The roar of the crowd. Thousands of voices yelling for her to be given over to them, for Oberyn to pay for the evil that he had brought to Dorne, for Doran for standing by as Oberyn and his whore shamed all of Dorne and kept bringing death and disgrace into the heart of his own family. The welcome she had gotten at her arrival was pleasant music compared to this!

Oberyn’s appearance suddenly took a whole new meaning.

“What!” Mellario exclaimed. “Are people still at this?”

“The Yronwoods won’t let them go,” Oberyn said easily.

“You wish,” Elvar muttered and amazingly, Oberyn let this one go.

The sound of the crowd seemed to rouse Alric from the stupor he had fallen back to as soon as Lord Vaith had taken his leave. He looked at the window but of course, he could only see the castle walls. “What orders do the guards have?” he asked.

“Not to use any arms,” someone replied; stunned, Lyanna found herself agreeing with Mellario who wondered aloud what was so special about Loreza that the news of her injury had spurred more fury than Elia’s humiliation, more fury than Prince Lewyn’s very death.

 


	7. Chapter 7

When the night began, Lyanna thought it was just shouting and stones, with some knife here and there, perhaps, much like the welcome she had gotten when she had first set a foot in Sunspear. But the drawn, grave faces of the men who came in and out all night long quickly disabused her of this notion. None of them would let himself look scared but their concern was evident.

“Are there many knights among those who incite the crowds?” she heard Oberyn ask.

“Quite a lot, my prince.”

Oberyn did not say anything but Lyanna thought he had grown more concerned. She could easily guess what weighed on his mind: crowds of smallfolk were one thing but a good number of knights entangled in this was something that looked much more serious… and yes, well worth some anxiety.

Still, she knew that in the Old Palace, the guards and knights were a significant number. She said so and only got a look of patient disdain from her lord husband. “It isn’t just knights,” he said. “Most of them have squires who are descended from the smallfolk. The smallfolk themselves do have arms.”

“Why?” Lyanna asked, puzzled. “Why are they allowed to have arms when there is no war?”

She immediately felt that she had misspoken but Oberyn looked too exhausted to waste any ire on her. He merely sent her a look that made her want to shrink into herself. There had been a war – quite recently! “Because smallfolk here have always had weapons and they use them to defend their homes and family and themselves when they travel , go hunting, and poach,” he said. “Does your smallfolk in the North not have arms? I thought it was everyone’s right.”

Lyanna blushed, realizing that she did not know. She had never given any thought to the way smallfolk conducted themselves in their everyday life. _Ned would know_ , she thought and her heart ached because of all the things Ned would never tell her now.

“So we’re hostages to the crowd?” she asked, disbelieving. This could not be happening. Highborn ladies were only hostages to enemies – usually of their own rank or just a little lower. Being a hostage to a mob? Her Stark blood railed against it. “This is intolerable! ”

“I agree,” Oberyn said coolly. “But I can’t see what can be done right now. They want to tear both of us apart – are you ready to sacrifice yourself?”

For a moment, she wondered if he was being serious and then decided that she needed some rest if she could even contemplate such a possibility. “I’m going to bed,” she said tiredly. “I advise you to do the same, my lord, because you look terrible.”

Oberyn had clearly not had a wink of sleep after the accident and with rising anger, Lyanna had to contemplate the possibility that he had not slept the night before either, too preoccupied to sigh after the Sand woman.

He shot her a look of pure hatred. “I didn’t ask for your advice,” he said. “My sister is hanging between life and death – ah, I see you have forgotten about this.”

Lyanna’s horror was instant. In her fear and indignation, she had forgotten about the reason it had all started. But whatever she said, it would only make the situation worse, so she just turned and left, her heart skipping a beat each time the roar rose and she recognized her own name and the words they called her with.

She entered her chambers some time before dawn and locked the door of her bedchamber carefully. Would these people enter? Why would Doran do nothing to disperse  them? Would this mob turn their ire against her child? Who would want to kill a child? For the first time in many months, she remembered the rumours of how Robert and Jaime Lannister had found Elia Martell and her son and shuddered. Why not? She took Jon from the cradle and brought him to her bed. His warmth was very soothing. As dawn turned the world from black to grey, she fell asleep, holding the babe close by.

She slept badly and was awake just in a few hours. As she broke her fast quite unenthusiastically, she decided that now, it was the time to really get an idea of what was going on. Usually, castles offered the sight of beautiful gardens and many small buildings but ultimately, they hid the life below from view. Lyanna climbed up the stairs of the Tower of the Sun, entered the empty hall under the dome and for the first time saw the two high seats – the blazing sun and the spear. _Nymeria’s seat_ , she thought and remembered the tales about the warrior queen that she had loved so much as a child.

The pain was instant and sharp. Nymeria’s seat. Nymeria’s name. No one else in Westeros had the wife left so much of herself in legacy. Lyanna had wed a descendant of Nymeria’s and yet she had wasted any chance of getting the respect that this queen had exacted for herself even before the marriage. At this moment, her hatred for Rhaegar was so unexpected and burning that she could not take a breath.  He had never meant to make her his partner, the way Nymeria had been for Mors – and he had also ruined this for her with every other man.

Horrified, she tried to suppress this feeling, distract herself. She went in to the next hall to have a look at the place where the Prince of Dorne met with his councilors. The low tables, the pillows meant for sitting, the other table clearly meant to hold the refreshments, instead of having them carried around by servants regularly made her shake her head – how did these people manage to get any work done in a place that looked fitted more for a group of friends gathered for a rest?

Holding her breath, she headed for the window and stood petrified.

Sunspear looked like a city under a siege. Parts of streets had been dug out – bricks had been dug out of pavements! Here and there, ever so often, Lyanna could see pits that could easily swallow an armed party. Everywhere, she could see the glint of steel and the curves of bows. Men walked between the armed people with the stance of people who knew what they were doing. Now, Lyanna realized why Oberyn had been so disturbed by the news that there were knights among the crowds…  She could barely see the streets from the people that swarmed them. From the windows of a house along the road a shower of stones was pouring out some unfortunate souls that had somehow incited the mob’s ire.

 _They’re too well organized_ , Lyanna thought, remembering the hatred that she had come upon at King’s Landing. Curses and stones thrown at her could not compare to this… war. Her goodfather had been right about this.

Suddenly exhausted, she closed the window and for a while stood staring at the dappled light dancing at the floor. She had never seen prettier shades, for they reflected the many colours of the glass inlaid in the dome; but all she could think about right now was that in order to enter the Old Palace, people would likely have to shout, “Shame on the Northern whore!” and “Hand her to us!” when she had just wanted to help!

She was on her way for the stairs when she heard voices in the throne room. Oberyn’s angry tones could not surprise or, honestly, attract her but she stood dead in her tracks when a calmer voice replied and this – _this_ was Oberyn. She had never quite grasped just how much _alike_ Doran and Oberyn were. She came closer and squinted in the throne room.

“I will get this settled, Doran,” Oberyn was saying. “You’ll see.”

“Please don’t! You did try to settle the matters and look what it brought us!” Doran’s voice was shaking with fury.

“I’m sorry.”

Lyanna’s eyes widened. She had never heard her husband say sorry to anyone, even Elia. Oh, he was sorry for what had happened to her, but to the best of Lyanna’s knowledge, he had never expressed any regret for any action of his.

Doran was not moved. Lyanna’s heart was in her throat. It was the first time she actually saw her goodbrother not in control of his feelings. He was so similar to his father and brother, she realized.

“It’s so good to hear this. Almost as good as having this mess sorted out. Stay put and don’t play games that are for big boys and girls. Did it even occur to you to consult someone before accepting the girl? For the Seven’s sake, Oberyn! Everyone a few years older than you would have told you how the smallfolk is! Because we were old enough to remember the riots and unrest when Mother came into power. Would it have killed you to ask?”

Lyanna’s eyes welled up. In Doran’s unfailing politeness and lack of bite towards her, so different from Oberyn and their womenfolk, it had been easy enough to forget that even he did not want her here. In Dorne, she was not a Stark of Winterfell. Just the girl. _He would have given me over to the crowd it he could,_ she thought miserably.

Oberyn looked stricken. “You mean you would have not agreed?”

Doran laughed angrily. “Look at them, brother! Just look at them! When we were children, Elvar and I did fall into the hands of one such mob. Of course I would not have agreed!”

Oberyn looked down. “I’m sorry,” he said again. “I was just thinking about Elia…”

“So you brought to us the girl whose disdain towards Loreza pushed us into this. Oberyn, don’t say anything and by the Seven, don’t do anything . Don’t make me take measures, do you hear me, because I can assure you that you aren’t going to like them!”

He turned so fast that Lyanna had no chance to hide somewhere as he strode past her. But he did not look annoyed to find out that she had been eavesdropping – he paid as much attention to her as he did to the line of pale servants with their backs against the wall. Lyanna did not know when they had come.

Mellario emerged from the shadows in the throne room and went to Oberyn who still stood in his place, his dark face as white as a sheet. She hesitated but finally  spoke. “He does love you,” she said. “With all his heart.”

“I know he does.” Oberyn’s voice was as bitter as Lyanna had only heard him during his conversation with Ellaria. “But not as much as Dorne.”

“He doesn’t even love me as much as Dorne,” Mellario replied tiredly and Lyanna thought she suddenly looked even smaller. “What’s this?”

She had heard the running footsteps before Lyanna. A servant rushed into the throne room. “Lady Loreza woke up!” he yelled out and both Mellario and Oberyn ran outside.

Lyanna’s heart sang… until she entered the antechamber where drawn faces and fearful eyes followed the maesters’ speech as they appraised Alric about his daughter’s condition.

“She might make it, my lord,” they were saying. “But even if she does, the broken bones are too many. She tried to move her toes but she did not quite succeed. It might be due to her general weakness and the blood loss, or she might be unable to walk anymore. But even if this is temporary… As I said, the broken bones are too many and they are healing now, as we talk. Perhaps we can set some of the bigger ones better but…”

“But?” Alric sounded as if he were questioning a captive on the battlefield.

“Any intervention might weaken her further. Setting bones is very painful and it’s going to sap on her strength that isn’t this big to start with. It might kill her when the blade and fall did not.”

“And if there is no intervention and she survives?”

“She will likely spend the rest of her life in constant pain. Bones broken and healing without being set in the right way are incredibly painful.”

“But you said _some of the bigger bones_ ,” Alric insisted. “What about the smaller ones? You mean that you cannot fix them?”

To this, there was no reply.


	8. Chapter 8

“Someone has told.”

To Lyanna, these words of Oberyn’s sounded like a revelation. Doran, though, only looked tired. ‘Yes. Don’t you know that someone always tells?”

“Always,” little Arianne repeated like an echo. She often did this, listening to her father as if he was laying bare all secrets of the universe for her – and then repeating his worldly wisdom. Lyanna would rather have her stop because it brought back the memories of another castle and other times.

Not that Doran and Oberyn were wrong about what they were saying. It made perfect sense to her now – if anything, the crowd had become more violent and restless. To Lyanna, the thought of spending her life in constant pain was more excruciating than the prospect of actually dying. Why should it be any different for these outside?

“What are you going to do about this?” Oberyn demanded.

“Nothing.”

“Don’t you want to know who betrayed us?”

Doran gave a derisive snort. “Are you ever going to learn the difference between betrayal and gossip? Do you think we would be able to keep it a secret forever? What do you want of me, to arrest every servant in this castle? Are you going to cut the woods for the kitchen fires yourself?”

“I am not talking about this and you know it! I thought you would never tolerate the lack of loyalty.”

“Leave him alone!” Lyanna said sharply, with anger that shocked her, as from the other end of the high table, Ellaria Sand shook her head in silent reproach.

Oberyn scowled at Lyanna, made almost the same with Ellaria, and finally his expression softened when he looked at his brother again. Lyanna could see that it was only now when he realized how exhausted Doran was. He rarely joined him in his prowling in front of Loreza’s door anymore, instead spending all of his time in his working room. He only reemerged once or twice a day to talk to his father and in the evening and maintain the illusion that nothing this big was happening by attending the evening feast as usual. But he looked aged and grey and so careworn that when silence stretched for longer than a heartbeat, his mind would immediately drift away.

Oberyn fell silent. At his side, Naeryn Sand was talking softly to Obara who, over the last few days, had become even more sullen. Oberyn said something that Lyanna did not hear but the girl ignored him without even listening. Yes, now Lyanna could see that she had been troubled before – when she had become even more troubled.

She felt someone watching her from the lower tables. It was not a kind look and she bristled. Did people expect of her to mother Oberyn’s children? There were enough women ready to step in. As far as Lyanna could say, even Mellario took part in raising them – it was hard not to when one of the girls basically shared her own Arianne’s bedchamber! Poor woman had no choice in whom she had to accept in her household because Oberyn was more important than Doran’s own wife. _Just like Robert was more important to Ned than his own sister_ , Lyanna thought bitterly.

Not far from her, Mellario and Alynna Gargalen were talking about the preparations for Alynna’s upcoming delivery. Lyanna was surprised how much this interested her. In the preparations for Jon’s arrival, she had only been an object, not a subject who could contribute. What did she know about birth? And whom could she have asked? Elia Martell?! She quickly looked away because Alynna’s fear, as much as she tried to hide it, was evident and the longing for her husband, even more so. She was young and strong, with an easy birth of twins behind her and she was terrified. Had Elia Martell felt the same, only to be abandoned before she could as much as rise from her bed? Shame burned in Lyanna, hotter than the sun that tormented her almost as much as the fear from the future, the wild will of the crowds…

She might have tried to talk to Elvar who was seated at her right but after the true extent of Loreza’s injuries had become clearer, she no longer dared. If someone had played a part in such a thing happening to her brothers, she would had lunged for their throat if they were as _obnoxious_ as to look at her. So she sat in her seat, lonely and miserable, and when she went back to her chambers and held her sleeping son to her, he woke up and started crying, whereupon she also did because she felt like a horrible mother for squeezing him too hard.

The next morning brought the first actions on Doran’s part: the crowd was dispersed. For the day. “How can the Prince expect any lasting effect if the men has an order not to kill anyone?” people whispered in the galleries and as much as Lyanna hated it, she knew it was true.

“My father thinks Prince Doran should be more assertive,” Ellaria Sand said in Loreza’s solar that everyone now went in and out a few times a day. “He feels the Prince is ruining his authority by letting them do their thing and go unpunished.”

“And what do _you_ think?” Oberyn asked and Lyanna ached, for he was so eager in his desire to hear the woman’s opinion.

“I think violence is never the answer,” Ellaria said. “I also think you should refrain from offering any opinions until the sting of suddenly not being the smallfolk’s darling goes away. It affects your judgment.”

She was speaking far more freely now, there was warmth in her eyes and easiness in her smile and Lyanna saw that Oberyn’s hand on her shoulder was no longer unwelcome.

 _They were together_ , she realized and something cold slowly settled in her heart. She could see it. Last night had been the night when they had rekindled their relationship. She had hoped that in the horror of everything that was happening, the agony of a woman they both loved, they would have forgotten about this; instead, they seemed to have found comfort in each other and Lyanna felt just as betrayed as when she had heard about Robert’s bastard, when she had seen Elia’s youngest child.

How long would it be before she was sent away to make things more comfortable for his mistress? How long would it be before Ellaria sat at the high table not as a friend of Loreza’s but Oberyn’s paramour, as they called it? Who could she turn to? Who would even want to take her side, talk to her lord husband and teach him some respect? Ellaria noticed her and shook Oberyn’s hand off but Lyanna did not feel reassured. The memory of a tourney and a laurel of roses that she had initially not taken was so fresh in her mind. She knew from experience just how intoxicating the feeling of being preferred over someone else could become. And Ellaria’s very generosity made her rage. She did not want his mistress’ charity!

She did not expect love from her husband and still, she had hoped, just a little…

“How is she doing?” she asked, as she did every time.

“Still no change,” came the reply that she heard every time, from Oberyn, in this case.

So they went on, waiting for the future.

 

 

The fall of night brought Lord Gargalen to the Old Palace and unlike everyone of note who ventured outside these days, he only looked weary of travel. Lady Gargalen even looked immaculately dressed. Before the evening feast, an improvised council was held in Loreza’s solar to let the newcomer know of all that had been done and hear his opinion. Lyanna rejected her revulsion at the very idea of someone looking so much like Aerys being listened to and soon found out that he was as different from the Mad King as two people could be. This one was sane… and very clever.

“I’ve never enjoyed such popularity as I did between the ship and the palace of the walls,” he said. “And I heard Errol and Gillerd’s names invoked almost as often as Loreza’s. Someone is edging people on and I think I know who.”

“Don’t we all!” Alric said bitterly. “It’s always one and the same, ever since my betrothal to Arianne was announced. We’ve been the foreigners; we’ve been the ones supporting the power of a House that would die off due to the lack of heirs. But now, it’s a new one: we’re the wolves who tear at each other’s throats, blinded by our thirst for power. Oberyn has wed the dishonour of Dorne who keeps wreaking death in our midst; Doran has become a reason for you to lose another son because Elia is good enough to waste ten thousand men at-arms upon but Loreza isn’t worth even a single man, her own husband, be spared for her sake when Doran’s power is at the stake. Don’t we all know who is always behind this!”

His bitterness spattered everything around. His brother stared at him and then took him by the elbow, led him to a corner and started talking to him in a low voice. Alric shook his head a few times as the truth surrounding the situation slowly took form in Lyanna’s mind. Yes, it was true that the flames of the unrest were being purposefully fanned up – but there was something else and it was the real reason why Doran would not resort to violent measures. Yes, smallfolk loved Oberyn and Elia, as they had loved Lewyn Martell, but these three were removed from them in a way Loreza was not. She was Alric’s bastard, almost a lady, but not quite. Her mother had not even been titled, most likely. She had nothing that was not allowed to her by the Martell family.

Or taken away.

By defending her, people felt that they were defending one of their own.

Or by thinking that they defended her…

“I’m so pleased to see you, Uncle,” Doran said when his father and uncle returned. “I warned you to reconsider your coming but I’m so glad that you did not listen.”

“I had to see for myself what was going on before I was forced to advance ahead of an army,” Lord Gargalen replied softly. “And we wanted to be here for the birth of our youngest grandson, of course.”

It struck Lyanna as strange that Lady Gargalen was not in the solar. She had left as soon as she had emerged from Loreza’s bedchamber. It was a strange behavior for a woman in Dorne. A Martell woman, or almost one. Lyanna was used to Oberyn’s cousins and Ashara Dayne poking their noses everywhere. Even Mellario attended every meeting of worth – but the woman who had been wed to Alric’s brother for over thirty years did not.

“What does your mother say about this?” Lord Gargalen finally asked.

“She doesn’t know.”

Silence fell and elongated. Lord Gargalen’s eyes went slowly from his brother’s face to those of his nephews. “So she has grown this ill? You didn’t tell her?”

“Yes.”

One would think that Alric did not care – this sole word sounded so coldly. But his black eyes told an entirely different tale. Lyanna shivered, as if another ghost had entered. Arianne Martell, the still Princess of Dorne, could as well be dead already. She never left her chambers or at least, Lyanna had never seen her. No one ever talked about her days, even in whispers. Lyanna did not even know if Oberyn visited her.

“You’d indeed better keep it from her, then,” Lord Gargalen said. “But you know what she would have said, no?”

Oberyn made a sharp gesture, his displeasure evident. “If you think of lecturing us about…” he started and his father gave him a warning look.

“You tend to speak with her voice,” Doran said. “Go on, tell me what my mother would have said.”

He was smiling slightly but it was not his usual kind smile. Instead, there was an edge in it that told Lyanna he already knew what he would hear.

“Call Lord Yronwood,” his uncle said. “Talk to him.”

“Lord Yronwood!” Doran spat. “This opportunist! You know as well as I do that he is one of the reasons for this unrest.”

“Yes, indeed,” his uncle agreed readily. “He has arranged it, so he can put an end to it.”

Lyanna had heard this name mentioned quite often in the tense conversations of the last days but she had never seen a reaction as strong as she now saw in her goodbrother: his teeth clenched so hard that he was bound to break some, his lips disappeared into a thin line, his eyes were trying to escape their sockets. “I can put an end to it,” Doran spat. “Today.”

“Do you care to try?” his uncle asked calmly.

Doran’s fingers clenched to fists as the door to the bedchamber opened and the septa who spent her days at Loreza’s bedside came out and motioned silently at Alric to come in.

Doran’s fingers opened. The rage disappeared from him face. Oberyn turned white; from the far end of the antechamber, Ellaria immediately realized what was going on with him and crossed the room. “Do you want me to go?” she asked but her voice was shaking.

He shook his head. “We’ll go together,” he said and while later, Lyanna would realize that this was the first time he openly showed preference to the Sand woman, now all she could think about was what they would find inside.

Finally, Alric rose, made a few steps, paused and made a few more steps before disappearing into the bedchamber.

He reappeared almost instantaneously and waved everyone in. He looked so shocked that his face revealed nothing.

Never before had Lyanna been happier to see someone moaning and squirming around feebly in what was clearly unbearable pain. Loreza might be as weak as a newborn kitten but she was moving! She moved her arms and legs.

“Her fever broke,” the septa said. “She’s going to live.”

Lyanna had been among the last ones to enter and she had stayed near the door so she could hear the deep sigh of relief Doran let off when he stepped inside. He turned to his uncle. “I will talk to Lord Yronwood,” he said and the words sounded as if he was promising to bring the Iron Throne down with his bare hands.

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

Doran Martell was not in the habit of conducting much of his business under the cloak of night but he started it so early and continued the once started tasks until so late that to anyone who used nighttime for sleeping, it would be one and the same.

Lyanna woke up about an hour after sunrise to the strange noise of… nothing. She had become so used to the shouting, whispering, mere breathing of thousands thronging the streets and squares as far as she could see that it had become like air to her – always there, never noticeable – only when she needed to draw her next breath. The realization that it was not there actually made her keep her breath with horror because her first thought was that things had gone from bad to worse.

They had not. Instead, well before the morning meal was served, the Old Palace was abuzz with the news of how Lord Anders Yronwood had been conducted to the Prince’s study a little before sunrise. Everyone else had been asked to leave, even Lord Alric and his brother – _especially_ Lord Alric and his brother – and a good thing it had been because Prince Doran had lost his nerves more than once, raising his voice in such a manner that he substituted for his father more than nicely. Lord Yronwood? Why, he had kept his composure… most of the time. He had left well after midnight and just a few hours later, the crowds had lost their… no, not their edge but their pointedness. From the Tower of the Sun, Lyanna saw for herself that as numerous as they were, there was no ongoing organization now. No steel of knightly armours. No flash of swords. The riot had been indeed left to the rioters.

And the storms in the Old Palace, to its dwellers…

“What does it mean that Quentyn _has_ to go to Yronwood?” Mellario demanded after entering the dining-room quite late and replying to any attempt to engage her just as late.

Alric put his sweetened lemon juice away, immediately recognizing the danger in her voice. “I thought Doran had told you – I do remember that you were quite displeased about it a few years ago.”

“But I thought that eventually, he had come to understand…”

 _What_ , Lyanna wondered _. What did you expect of him to understand? Did you really think you could go from Essos and expect to impose your customs here? We’ve had our children fostered out for hundreds of years_. She could understand Mellarios’ feelings since Quentyn was only a year older than her own son but she hoped that when Jon’s time to leave home came, she would be reconciled already. Still, the thought of this inevitable prospect chilled her to the bone. If Doran did not take Mellario’s opinion into account, for all his love for her, what could she expect of Oberyn?

“I believe he did.” Alric’s voice was softer now. “But this doesn’t equal changing traditions that are centuries old, Mellario.”

“I see that now.” Mellario’s voice was shaking with rage and grief that was almost too much to bear. Lyanna wondered if Doran’s absence from the table was indeed dictated by Dorne’s affairs, or his knowledge how his lady life would be. They had argued long and bitterly already and it had brought Mellario as little success as Lyanna’s avoidance of conflicts with Oberyn had yielded. Her tears welled up and she couldn’t say if it was Mellario that she was crying, or herself. She closed her eyes against the tears and managed to force them back, wondering if she was turning into one of those women she had always despised. Women who cried so easily over things like men and getting an embroidery wrong yet again. For the last half year, she had wept more than all of her years before combined.

“Are you scared that Yronwood will somehow mistreat him?” Alric asked bluntly. “He won’t. It’s just not done, he isn’t this stupid and honestly, I don’t think he is this dishonourable either. We don’t harm children to punish them for their parents’ sins.”

 _We._ Dornishmen. Lyanna looked down and felt even more of an outsider because of the natural ease with which he claimed affinity to their enemy. Only with her, Lyanna, he behaved as if she were a stranger that he owed mere courtesy to, now, after Loreza’s… accident. _Are you going to harm my child to punish me and Rhaegar for our sins_ , she wondered but this sounded false. _Are you going to harm my child to punish me?_

Now, this was better. No matter how unhappy she was here, it took effort to think of Rhaegar, Jon and herself as a whole. The unity had taken its first hit when she had learned of her father and Brandon’s death and it had barely recovered after Rhaegar’s death. The discovery that he had given up on her love so easily and gone back to Elia – this, it could never recover from. A man so fickle with his promises – he would have reneged on his word to her again. _He’s no better than Oberyn_ , she thought bitterly and felt sick at realizing that even if Oberyn lost this look of a happy stable boy whenever he thought of his whore and decide to go back to her, she would have as little choice in the matter as Elia had.

Now, Alric kept talking to Mellario and Lyanna saw how her goodsister’s expression softened. Alric did have charm and as little as the two had in common, there was certain affection and trust. Lyanna felt anger and envy at the same time because she was not sure she would ever get anything close to that and in another wing of the Old Palace, plans were already put in motion to renovate a set of chambers to Ellaria Sand’s liking. 

* * *

“If we let them see Loreza, perhaps then…”

To Lyanna, Lord Dayne’s words sounded very reasonably but her goodfather did not agree. Elvar was shaking his head already.

“How so?” Alric asked. “Do you really imagine that I’d have her jostled up and down around Sunspear to show everyone that she isn’t dying? When every movement makes her scream in pain?”

“No.” Arel Dayne looked thoughtful. “ But there might be another option…”

“Yes, letting people enter the Old Palace to see her. How many? What if all of them want to come in? Will this palace turn into the king’s way or what?”

“There is something else as well,” Alynna interrupted. “When Loreza recovers, she will be crushed and humiliated if anyone had seen her in this state or the reality of just how bad off she is makes it through. I don’t recommend it.”

Lyanna felt that she could no longer take it. “Yes. Instead, you recommend to keep the rumours spreading – the rumours that paint me as the monster. The longer people feel that something is hidden from them about her, the blacker they will see me…”

The look that Oberyn’s cousin gave her was sheer ice. “This is no concern of mine, my lady. If you wanted to be seen all in white, perhaps you should have enlisted the help of daylight, instead of skunking away under the cover of night. Don’t tell me it was impossible – I did it when I wanted to wed my husband and not your beloved Prince. Do you see people thinking me monster?”

“That’s because they don’t see your poison…”

Alynna waved a hand. “Be that as it may. People of age have more pressing tasks to deal with than catering about the way you see me. Don’t do it,” she said again, looking at her uncle.

Of course, Alric did not find it proper to scold her. _Naturally_ , Oberyn did not either. Furious, Lyanna rose and strode for the door, kicking the skirts of the uncomfortably fluid Dornish robes she had to wear here. The last thing she saw before she slammed the door behind her was Oberyn’s astounded face, a sight which delighted her to no end. Now, after the danger that had not made any of them want to give her over to the crowd to get it to settle, she felt safe, or as safe as she could be here. Really, in what mattered she seemed to be treated not worse than Doran’s own wife. If they had wanted to separate Jon from her, they would have already done so – if not at her arrival, then when everyone had been fearing that Loreza might die. The worst thing that Oberyn might do to her was to slap her – and it was far, far more merciful than what Rhaegar had done.

* * *

“In a few days, you may go out into the city.”

This was so unexpected that Lyanna blinked and left the book she was reading on the floor next to her, doing her best to crawl upright without him noticing – a lost cause, of course. He could have hardly missed the fact that she was lying on the floor amidst big pillows, a habit that every woman in this palace seemed to love. The very climate enticed to it and Lyanna’s pillows were of highest quality even if the attitude of her new family was not. Silk kept her cool despite the hot air and the goblet of lemon water next to her provided additional help.

Oberyn looked at her and she abandoned the covert way that sullied her dignity. What had his cousin called it? Skulking? Lyanna had not expected of a real lady to _know_ this word. She turned to her side and pushed herself upright and onto her feet.

“Go out into the city? What do you mean?”

He shrugged helplessly. “Adequately protected and discreet, of course. People are still there, railing against you. You look quite overwhelmed and in my experience, when you’re overwhelmed, bad things tend to happen. I hope a walk in the city might bring you some composure. It isn’t this dangerous anymore.”

As lightheaded by her new certainty as she was, Lyanna knew better than mock him openly. Besides, it actually saddened her to see concern for her safety with no care for her feelings. Was that how everyone saw her – a walking danger, ready to do the most untowardly things if provoked? “Is that how you see me?” she asked quietly.

“Have you ever given me any reason to see you otherwise?” he asked back and the simplicity of it hit Lyanna like a brick: her own transgressions aside, she had had luck against her every time since her betrothal to him had been announced. And as luck kept going against her, it worked for the Sand woman: this very morning, Lyanna had heard Naeryn and Mellario discuss financial settlements that Oberyn had put in motion for her before they had noticed Lyanna’s arrival.

If there was any justice, luck would stop working for the woman who sold herself, as inborn as it was for a woman of Ellaria’s origins, and work for Lyanna once. But Lyanna did not even know what she wanted of it, let alone how to achieve it.

When she looked up, distracted from her dark reflections, he had already gone. Lyanna had little doubt where he had gone.

 


	10. Chapter 10

It might be Lyanna’s newfound confidence that no matter what, Oberyn wasn’t going to force her into a forbidden castle and forget about her, let alone take her child away from her, or it might be the natural inclination of all humans to forget about trouble as soon as it went away, but her feeling  that she was going mad with being imprisoned into the Old Palace, her fervent longing to escape somewhere, somehow, for some time disappeared the moment she was told that she could accompany Naeryn into the market. She knew an order when she heard one and her wounded pride was stronger than the relief of finally going out. She would have liked to think that Oberyn was doing this partly because he felt uncomfortable and wanted to be free from her presence for a while as he made a fool out of himself over the Sand woman but she knew that all he cared for was not to annoy her overly much, lest she did something that might spin out of control.

She wanted to be taken into account, always had, but not like this…

Still, when the time to go out came, even he looked doubtful. “Can you deal with both of them?” he asked his cousin and Naeryn shrugged.

“The day I let two petty children get the better of me is the day I’d wonder what’s so wrong with me,” she replied.

“I am not a child!” Lyanna and Obara Sand said at the same time and Oberyn sighed.

“You can come to me tonight if you need to wonder aloud,” he said and gave his daughter a stern look. “Listen to Naeryn, Obara. I’m serious.”

The girl huffed and he gave his cousin a look of pity. “If I can cite Uncle Carral, we don’t take people out of holes they dig for themselves,” he said. “Here you are, just in case their purchases overcome the coin they have on them.”

Obara did not find this interesting but Lyanna bristled. So she could not be trusted even with the money to make her own purchases, should they extend a certain sum, could she? She might even be expected to feel grateful because her lord husband had deemed it proper to even leave a purse of coin in her bedchamber?

She was so engrossed in her own feelings that she failed to see just how angry Obara was. Only when they were out of the gates, she took notice of the angry silence around them. The girl was seething with anger. Lyanna had never seen her get along with Naeryn very well – _who_ did Obara get along with, except for her sister Nymeria and Oberyn whom she adored? – but she could not remember to have ever seen her this distant.  But when they found themselves in the streets, she forgot all about her companions. Her head turned this and that way, drawn by a new swirl of side, a new clash of sound and her wide eyes could not take in everything she yearned to see.

She had thought that she had seen shadow city in those long weeks and months that she had spent staring at it from the walls and terrace of the Old Palace. She had been lying to herself. Even in Winterfell, she could never see the village under her own walls until she rode past it – and she had been born there.

This Dornish city – a town, Brandon would have corrected her, she thought with a pang in her heart – looked nothing like the cities she had seen in the riverlands, let alone King’s Landing. It was smaller, dustier… and _other_. She might have been confused by the cities that were not White Harbour but she had felt something familiar in them, she now realized. Now when she did not feel it here.

There was nothing even remotedly familiar in the markets they were crossing. The aroma of sandalwood and cinnamon was almost overwhelming, lemons were bought and handled by buyers as casually as if they were apples, bells were singing and there was an open stall of silks – open stall! The sun danced on the fabrics, showering them into sparkles, turning them into so many colourful fires. Lyanna impulsively stopped there and grabbed a length of green silk, not caring how much it cost or if it would suit her. She simply wanted to hold onto part of the beauty.

This was the beginning. Before she regained her senses, the coin in her purse had diminished threateningly – and the guards walking discreetly behind them had their hands full because the maidservant could not keep up with Lyanna’s purchases. Naeryn was staring at her, astonished.

“I didn’t think you were the kind to go for these,” she said.

“I didn’t think so either,” Lyanna replied impulsively. “But they are so beautiful…”

For a first time, she realized that so many of the women she disdained for being so overly feminine might just like beautiful things; for a first time, something spoke to femininity in her – except for Rhaegar. Despair tried to seize her once again because in this day, Dorne looked like a land of light and beauty – it might have been this land for her constantly if she did not have to watch for her every step!

When she regained control, she saw that Naeryn was no longer talking to her. She was buying things for Obara who angrily said that she did not want silks and there was no reason to waste money on such foolishness.

“Besides, they won’t make me pretty,” she finished, matter of factly, and in this Lyanna heard an echo of her own past.

But Naeryn proved smarter than those highborn Northern girls who had pretended that Lyanna was prettier than any of them, hoping to win her favour for their Houses: Oberyn’s bastard cousin just smiled. “You don’t know this yet,” she said.

Obara snorted. “No, I don’t. The only silks I had seen before I came here were on the clients. Not that their lust was diminished because the girls wore homespun clothes,” she added. “Some of the women actually _saved_ money to buy silks – I could never understand them.”

Lyanna couldn’t understand the purpose of this rant but Naeryn’s gaze softened. “You don’t need to save money,” she said. “Your father will cater to your wishes.”

“For how long?” Obara spat and while Naeryn’s explanations that this _how long_ was always, the girl did not seem convinced at all.

She still bought one length of silk, though, as bright as the sea under the sun. “It’s for Loreza,” she explained. “It will look lovely on her.”

Lyanna expected that the girl would buy a present for her father but Obara did not. Lyanna bought a magnificent saddle with a long line of velvet tassels, wondering sadly when she’d have the chance to use it.

Still, it was a wonderful day. And when she handed the saddle to their guards and turned, she saw something that made her squeal in delight. “Look!” she cried out. “What’s this?”

This was an enormous beast with good eyes, brown pelt and... a hump right in the middle of its back. Lyanna elbowed her way through the crowd in a manner that would have left her father mortified but if she asked politely everyone on the way, she’d reach the place where the camel was about the time it would have left! The wind carried warm breath to her face and even its stench could not stop her from making a few more steps, so she could see the animal close by. She was aching to climb on its hump and experience the slow rocking of its heavy steps. It would be a different thrill than the storm of a fierce ride but she longed for it. _Rhaegar promised to show me Dorne_ _but he never would have_ , she thought bitterly but without surprise. _He never would have taken me where these animals dwell._ But anyway, she had just seen a creature she could have never imagined and her world was richer for this.

“People use them for traveling through the desert,” Naeryn said when Lyanna returned to them.

“I wish I could ride one to the end of the world,” Lyanna said dreamily. “I have always wanted to escape…”

“You?” Obara was staring at her. “What from?”

Lyanna sighed. “You wouldn’t understand,” she said, not wishing to quarrel. “Yes, I have always had everything I demanded brought over to me but freedom is…” She shook her head. “It’s worth more than any earthly good.”

“It’s an easy thing to say for the lady with the nice saddle,” Obara replied rudely. “Freedom – it is not to feel the horsewhip of a client cut into your bare back, Lady Lyanna. You have never wondered if the brothel-keeper will wait for your first moonblood to come, or sell you to a man who likes his girls young and untouched. You don’t need to look at me like this, either of you,” she added angrily, turning her back on them. “I am not complaining. Don’t you dare pity me. But sometimes I wonder what is this world that I found myself in. Surely it can’t be the real one?”

This was too much! The girl had managed to spoil even this glorious day! Furious, Lyanna grabbed her by the shoulder and tried to drag her away from the crowd, in one of the empty side-alleys. Obara shook her away; stunned, Lyanna realized that the girl was stronger than her. She had never met any female who could be her physical match.

“How dare you!” she hissed. “Your father is doing everything he can to please you but you haven’t stopped looking disgruntled since the moment I first laid my eyes on you. What’s wrong with you?”

Obara gulped. “ _You_ talk about disgruntled? You, of the pinched face, as if you constantly smell something rotten? You who dislike everything, from our food to the fact that our father won’t send us away for you?”

“He might send you away because of yourself,” Lyanna retorted. “With the way you behave…”

The younger girl snorted. “You’d better not raise your hopes up,” she said. “If he gets rid of us, it will be for her – Ellaria…”

“No one is going to get rid of anyone else,” Naeryn said firmly but neither of her companions were listening to her. The people around them were starting to give an ear to the raised voices. The crowd started closing on them; with a curse, Naeryn looked around for something and then grabbed them by the hands and darted into the nearest alley.

Cold hit Lyanna all of a sudden as soon as they stopped. Here, the street was so narrow that the houses on both sides were leaning towards each other, creating a constant shadow. Naeryn gave them a look of sheer fury. “Are you mad?” she demanded. “You both know we can be recognized! We were not supposed to draw attention to ourselves!”

“It was her fault!” Lyanna and Obara said simultaneously, red with anger.

“I don’t care whose fault it was!” Naeryn snapped, still looking around. “Oberyn was right, after all – but even he didn’t foresee that you’d be so stupid to quarrel like fisherwomen in the street. Sooner or later, someone would have recognized us – and with the city so recently calmed down, who knows what might have happen? With your yelling at one another, you might have just started this little rebellion that their Yronwood lordships couldn’t quite incite but they needed so much. And in the crowd, who can say for sure that it was or was not a sad accident?”

“What?” Lyanna snapped, tired of this tirade, but then Naeryn’s eyes went as wide as saucers and she pointed at something behind Lyanna’s back.

“Them!”

Lyanna didn’t know who _they_ were but the steel in their hands spoke eloquently. Naeryn turned and ran and the other two followed.

“This way!” Naeryn whispered and led them through a labyrinth of dark alleys, where they left a trail of indignant shouts of people pushed out of the way and no less indignant braying of disturbed monkeys. From time to time, when they looked over their shoulder, they saw their pursuers looking for them in the wrong alley but looking anyway.

Lyanna’s heart was thumping in her ears. She desperately regretted burdening their guards with her purchases. She regretted even more ever having seen the camel – this was the moment they had lost the palace men. But eventually, they stopped and listened intently – and heard nothing.

“We might have lost them,” Naeryn said but still they made a dash for the Old Palace that was stopped only when behind a corner, Naeryn ran over a man – literally.

“Ouch!” he groaned, collapsing on the ground and pressing a hand against his ribs. Naeryn fell straight over him, so her ribs were intact. She immediately scrambled to her feet and held out a hand to help him up. Lyanna was surprised to see how strong her arms were. Indeed, her grasp looked stronger than many a man at-arms in Winterfell.

And then, Naeryn recoiled, recognizing the man. He stared at her, as if unable to look away from her face but her hostility finally made its way to his recognition. He let go of her hand and then realized there was just one.

Disappointment played so clearly on his face that Lyanna almost pitied him.

“Naeryn Sand?” he asked.

“Did you send these men after us?” she demanded and Lyanna deemed this very foolish of a smart woman like Naeryn. It was clear where he was coming from – his haphazard clothing did not make room for doubt. He had had far more pleasant occupations than planning murder.

“Which men?” he asked.

“Our candidate-murderers,” Naeryn replied. “Don’t bother telling me you’re true to your world, Lord Yronwood; I won’t believe you.”

Once again, he stared at her as if bewitched. “You resemble your uncle very much, my lady,” he said.

She raised a silver eyebrow. “Indeed? Alric?”

He shook his head. “No, Lord Gargalen. I’ve always found him the more unlikable of the two. Come on, I’ll accompany you to the palace. Don’t say no,” he added. “You said you’ve got murderers on your feet.”

By now, Naeryn had also realized the plain truth; without word, she turned and headed left. Lyanna and Obara followed and Lord Yronwood muttered, “Knocked down by true love. What a tale it could have made!”

For a moment, Lyanna wondered if he had felt like she had when Rhaegar had first found her, demasked her, looked at her. Naeryn did resemble him physically – and his physical presence had been irresistible to Lyanna, although she doubted she would have done as much as look at him now.

No, it was stupid. This was a thing that happened to maids of fourteen, not middle-aged men. Love did not exist – Lyanna knew that now, as much as this realization hurt.

 

 


End file.
